Talk:Offshoots of Operation Car Wash/Archive 3

Operation Unfair Play, Gotham City need rewrite
this is word for word from the referenced Veja article, it looks like. Noticed while I was trying to fix the Google translation. Will need to be rewritten to avoid plagiarism. I can't do this right now. At least it's attributed. The question I had that was making me look at the Portuguese sources is a) what is this about cash tuition and b) it doesn't seem to make sense that Nuzman paid the bribes; is there something I am not catching about the verb tense? Seems like he was more likely a recipient. I need a break from this draft Elinruby (talk) 08:03, 30 November 2019 (UTC)
 * noticed the same thing in the referenced text from Folha in Operation Gotham City; the text of the reference does support the test of the article, but it looks word for word to my non-Portuguese-speaking eye. So this section needs more references and a rewrite also, and ideally this should be fixed on pt.wikipedia as well, which I am absolutely unable to do. Elinruby (talk) 21:00, 30 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Yeah, things are usually a mess over there, but I'll try and have a look at these some time. - ChrisWar666 (talk) 21:29, 30 November 2019 (UTC)
 * It's crucial to signal plagiarism if you notice it. This is only a draft, but we need to not forget which portions are even suspected of plagiarism. Please add the following to any section you suspect of containing plagiarized content:
 * You can use the 'reason' param to indicate which sentence/paragraph/snippet you suspect of being copied; otherwise just leave it out. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 03:18, 7 December 2019 (UTC)
 * They'll delete it. I will rewrite those two sections in English before we undraft it. Unless someone else does it first. What we need is the pt.wikipedia code to do that over there. Elinruby (talk) 07:30, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
 * They should, but not our problem (unless you want to contribute over there as well)., do you know how to flag an article on pt-wiki as a possible copyright violation or cut-paste? Mathglot (talk) 12:15, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
 * They should, but not our problem (unless you want to contribute over there as well)., do you know how to flag an article on pt-wiki as a possible copyright violation or cut-paste? Mathglot (talk) 12:15, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

I have found only pt:Predefinição:ESR-VDA, that nominate the article to Proposed deletion (Wikipédia:Eliminação semirrápida). I made this question about it. Which text is in copyvio and which is the source?--PauloMSimoes (talk) 17:01, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
 * , can you respond to PauloMSimoes with a description of the apparent copy-paste and its source? Mathglot (talk) 19:13, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't think you need to delete it. Just re-write it and add in some additional information. But for the Operation Gotham City section, the source is referenced, but the text is word for word from the referenced source. The overlapping text for that section is: "para prender dois empresários da construção civil, suspeitos de ocultar o patrimônio do ex-presidente do DETRO (Departamento de Transporte Rodoviário) do Rio de Janeiro, Rogério Onofre. Ele foi acusado de ter recebido R$ 43 milhões de empresários de ônibus. O empresário Nuno Coelho, conhecido como "Batman", foi preso em Curitiba. Já Guilherme Vialle, o "Robin", está no exterior e já consta na difusão vermelha da Interpol. Os dois são sócios da empresa VCG Empreendimentos Imobiliários e da Koios Participações. De acordo com as investigações, Onofre e sua mulher, Dayse Neves, compraram 11 imóveis que pertenciam ao grupo dos empresários, mas declararam em cartório apenas 50% do custo real das aquisições". That is basically all of the text. I will come back with this information for Operation Unfair Play Elinruby (talk) 00:20, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Text without copyvio.--PauloMSimoes (talk) 01:00, 9 December 2019 (UTC)


 * For Operation Unfair Play the text below is referenced to Veja and the text of the article below is identical to the Veja test, except as noted:
 * Em 5 de setembro de 2017, <--not in Veja article
 * "a Polícia Federal e o Ministério Público Federal realizaram operação (word missing) para investigar um esquema de compra de votos para a escolha do Rio de Janeiro como sede dos Jogos Olímpicos de 2016."
 * (additional explanatory test in pt.wiki)
 * "A operação visou o pagamento de propina em troca da contratação de empresas terceirizadas pelo governo do Rio de Janeiro.
 * Foram cumpridos"
 * (Three words in original not in pt.wiki)
 * "dois mandados de prisão preventiva e onze de busca e apreensão, nas cidades do Rio de Janeiro, Nova Iguaçu (RJ) e em Paris, na França. A operação envolveu uma cooperação internacional com a França e com os Estados Unidos. Um dos alvos de busca e apreensão foi o presidente do Comitê Olímpico do Brasil (COB), Carlos Arthur Nuzman, investigado por suposto pagamento de propina de 1,5 milhão de dólares."
 * (a dozen words in text not in pt.wiki)
 * "O pagamento das propinas era feito por meio de entrega de dinheiro em espécie, celebração de contratos fictícios, pagamento de despesas pessoais e transferências de contas de doleiros. Os presos serão investigados por corrupção, lavagem de dinheiro e organização criminosa." Elinruby (talk) 00:37, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Pasadena Refinery
Added some (confusing) detail about this to the Delcídio do Amaral section. There is a lot more about this in the pages about Dilma Rousseff (probably Impeachment of Dilma Rousseff), if anyone is interested in bringing it in; I spent some time trying to understand this at some point a while back. I don't think I ever figured out who got the bribes, and Dilma was not charged in this matter, but she was chairman of the Board of Directors of Petrobras at the time.Elinruby (talk) 00:33, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Bottom line, though, Petrobras lost hundreds of millions of dollars, corruption suspected. Elinruby (talk) 21:01, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

documents and testimonials obtained in cases of sovereign immunity.
this is from the lead. I think testimonials should be testimony, and that this is saying that when the investigations involved someone then in office, the investigators gathered evidence and depositions for future prosecution. Feedback? Elinruby (talk) 14:35, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Agree with 'testimony'. I had been wondering for some time about that "sovereign immunity" thing, trying to figure out what that was about, but what you said makes sense. Have you checked the Fases article, to see if that sheds some light? Mathglot (talk) 10:52, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Not yet. I will soon. But it is a fact, I assure you, that government officials above a certain level are tried for high crimes in a special court, and for misdemeanors not until they leave office. Although misdemeanor may be the wrong word. I am thinking they use civil law categories. But they cannot be tried for most things while in office, and this came up for example with Michel Temer. Elinruby (talk) 07:36, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
 * "The corruption investigation, which has broadened to other state-run companies and ministries, is divided between Moro’s court in the southern city of Curitiba, where trials have been ongoing since last year, and the Supreme Court in Brasilia, the only court that can try sitting politicians." <-- from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-corruption-idUSKCN0QV00D20150826 Elinruby (talk) 02:52, 9 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Thats probably because of foro privilegiado which certain (but not all) politicians can benefit from. Mathglot (talk) 11:17, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

Right, I think I added that as a see also. It's definitely part of the JBS stuff, but it's not on either list of car wash investigations Elinruby (talk) 21:59, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

Found this pt "Phases" article with a large overlap with this one
Just noticed the article Fases da Operação Lava Jato at pt-wiki. There is quite a large overlap between it and Desdobramentos. I don't see how it makes sense, even on pt-wiki, to have both of those articles, let alone having two such on en-wiki. So, just putting this out there, because certain questions about the meaning of the sections in Desdobramentos, might be solved by reading the corresponding "phase" in the Fases article.

This also may have implications for two other discussions above, namely,, and. For the former, it may suggest a new title for this article, as well as a possible section re-org. Mathglot (talk) 01:45, 6 December 2019 (UTC)


 * The "" section below contains comments that follow up some of the issues raised in subsections here. Mathglot (talk) 17:50, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Scope change and additional sections
Reprising a comment at this section: what if we alter the scope so it’s no longer "offshoots", and we don’t have to define what’s "original OCW" and what's an "offshoot", we just include it all? That would mean a new H3 section at the top for 2014, and the investigations that happened that year, but that just seems to make the article more coherent as a topic.

With the recent rename, and the discovery of the Fases article on pt-wiki, this makes more sense than ever. I'll add a 2014 section with some operations from "original OCW", and then the article topic will make more sense, as well as fitting the new title to a 'T'. We can translate (and summarize) the 2014 sections from Fases. Mathglot (talk) 02:15, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Added a new #2014 section, and seven H4 subsections under it, each with a defining sentence fragment to start off the Operation description. Mathglot (talk) 07:16, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Based on the next subsection adding the 2014 section was probably a mistake.  See below. Mathglot (talk) 05:43, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Phases vs. offshoots
Hm, after further examination, I'm thinking now that Fases and Desdobramentos are two different things, like two different ways of slicing up the totality of OCW; and if that's the case, then my adding the new section #2014 to this article using the Fases article as a basis, was a mistake and should be undone.

Compare these two Nav templates on pt-wiki:
 * Predefinição:Desdobramentos da Operação Lava Jato
 * Predefinição:Fases da Operação Lava Jato

Note that the first one has the "Offshoot" operations, and matches the section names in the Desdobramentos article we're translating. The exceptions in our article, are the seven operations in 2014 that I just added, which I now believe don't belong there, and one or two other operations like our section #Operation Xepa that recently got added; which perhaps also doesn't belong because it is not in pt:Desdobramentos da Operação Lava Jato or the first template, because it is considered a "Phase" and not an "Offshoot". This is a distinction I don't yet fully understand.

The second template above shows *only* the "Phases". Note how they are all numbered (1–63, currently) and have names as well. Note that for the most part, the operation names in that template don't match any of the operation names we have in this article, other than the few exceptions noted above. Here's a source that lists all the phases: Operação Lava Jato - Estadão.

We need to unscramble this, to figure out what those two terms (Desdobramentos/Offshoots versus Fases/Phases) really refer to, why it's not just one big list of operations, and why they are divided into two sets like that. Maybe the "Phases" are the pre-planned ones, and the "Offshoots" are ones that got added, from stuff they found out while doing one of the pre-planned ones? Adding and. Mathglot (talk) 09:47, 7 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Regardless how they determine what's an "offshoot" and what's a "phase", it's clear from the infographic that phases are different. I've created Draft:Operation Car Wash investigation phases as a container for the "Phases" stuff, and started by moving section "2014" from this article to the new Draft, along with top and bottom material. I'll copy over empty section headers from the pt-wiki article to give it a structure that looks like the pt article, with empty sections. Xepa should probably move over there, once the new draft section structure is in place. Mathglot (talk) 20:55, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
 * ✅. Moved section 2014 (diff) from here to the Draft phases article. Note that section #Operation Xepa still needs to be moved. Mathglot (talk) 01:17, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Offshoots abroad
Found yet another source of additional OCW desdobramentos investigations; these involve "offshoots abroad" that include investigations mentioning seventeen countries in total, from Angola to Venezuela. See pt:Desdobramentos da Operação Lava Jato fora do Brasil. Mathglot (talk) 02:08, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Does operation Xepa belong here
Based on my developing, but still imperfect, understanding of the difference between fases and desdobramentos in the context of OCW operations, I believe that the section Operation Xepa doesn't belong in this article, since it's a phase and not an offshoot. See the top of this section, the first subsection (#Scope change), and pt:Operação Xepa – phase 26. Mathglot (talk) 02:26, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
 * If it is a phase not an offshoot then I guess we should move it over there. But what word does pt.wikipedia use? Elinruby (talk) 07:42, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
 * They use Fase: see pt:Operação Xepa and #26 at pt:Fases da Operação Lava Jato. The target location for the move is here.  Mathglot (talk) 03:03, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
 * OK, I am going to start working on that page now. A lot of the Abroad section I just translated may in fact go over there, let me work on this a bit. Elinruby (talk) 04:58, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

Strangely, there is coverage of Operation Xepa both at the Desdobramentos article (here) and at the Fases article: (here, under "26.ª fase"), but the treatment in each of them is not identical. In en-wiki, I've used selective transclusion so we can just have one copy of it to maintain for both articles, but the content currently reflects only the translated Desdobramentos content, even though it resides currently in the "Phases" article. It should have the translated content from Fases Phase 26 merged into it. Mathglot (talk) 11:22, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Portuguese web archive
Was searching for a dead url for Operation Bidone that archive.org didn't have, and discovered that there's an archival service called arquivo.pt that you can try. (It didn't have it either, in this case; but they have plenty of urls archived there.) For scientific topics, you can also try Cornell's arxiv.org, but that doesn't apply to this article. Mathglot (talk) 00:47, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Júlio Gonçalves de Lima Filho
Not finding his name on a web search but Filho is very familiar, he comes up in this a lot somehow. Still on a phone in another country, will try to look into this when I am definitely on wifi Elinruby (talk) 00:19, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
 * "Filho" can be a name, but more often, it just means "Junior", as in, Martin Luther King, Junior. Some people really do have the last name Filho, and then you can usually tell, because they don't have anything that sounds like a last name, right before the Filho.  Articles in Portuguese will sometimes call them "John Doe Filho" and sometimes "John Doe Júnior".  Sometimes even both, in the same article. HTH, Mathglot (talk) 01:47, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
 * You can try this search: or check out this article that mentions him. Mathglot (talk) 01:50, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Folha has three articles mentioning him: . Mathglot (talk) 01:55, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Aha it may have beem another Junior then, but thanks for the lookup. I will see if I can use these to reference him Elinruby (talk) 07:26, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
 * , Just fyi: I've made an update to Template:Portuguese name to make it easier to describe what's going on in articles about people with the suffix Filho at the end of their name. (There are also some other suffixes, less common, which are also handled.) See the doc for usage. Mathglot (talk) 12:17, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

Idea for a next translation
Since you all seem interested in translating Brazil-related topics, or Lava Jato related topics, more precisely, I suggest we translate pt:Crise econômica no Brasil desde 2014 (to 2014 Brazilian economic crisis) next. Right now I'm working on further expanding it in the Portuguese Wikipedia, but when I'm done, we can start. The article has been written almost entirely by myself (I'd say 95% of it) and the Lava Jato investigations are recognized as one of the causes of this crisis, which is the most severe in decades. So it is in fact related to Lava Jato.

That article is very important, in my opinion, but surprisingly, very few people are working on expanding it, both here and in the pt.wiki. So... here is my suggestion. Cheers. --Bageense(disc.) 13:16, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
 * good idea, and I did some minor copy-editing. My main question at the moment is that this seems to blame the recession on social spending by Lula and Dilma, which is unKeynsian; that may well have been a factor but when half a billion dollars disappears in a shady transaction over a broken-down refinery, and that is only one part of the corruption, hmm, I think there may be more to the story. But I will come back to this after I have done some more research. Elinruby (talk) 04:55, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
 * The article in the ptwiki is good and has good sources, so there isn't anything to be fixed. It just needs to be translated. Yes, Lava Jato is a big cause of the crisis. The other cause isn't "social spending", it's quite the opposite, actually, but things will get clearer when we read and translate the article. Cheers! --Bageense(disc.) 14:39, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

Operation Brazil Cost
I've modified the original text in the ptwiki (see diff) to make the tranlation a bit easier. The text really is poorly written and I'm not quite sure what a "direcionamento de contratos" scheme is. --Bageense(disc.) 15:50, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Bageense, thanks! That helps. In the meantime, I found some pretty good web-based resources about "Custo Brasil" which I've used to beef up the glossary.  I do have one question about that one section (not in the part that was changed): it involves the use of the word para in connection with a bribe, here:
 * A Polícia Federal suspeitava da existência de pagamento de propina de 100 milhões de reais para essa empresa...
 * This is probably a pretty elementary question, but I'm confused about the use of para here. In English, we would use the prepositions to and by with bribes: "a bribe paid to XYZ" means XYZ received money; a bribe paid by ABC" means that ABC gave money to somebody. For me, para would mean to (or for) normally, so it sounds to me like "pagamento de propina... para essa empresa..." means, that somebody is paying money to Consist Software. But that makes no sense to me: in the real world, shouldn't it be the Company that is paying the money to somebody in government, in order to get a big contract? To be clear: did Consist receive money, or did they give money out to somebody in this bribe?  It has to be the latter: they gave money out, right?  If that's true, then why the word para here? Mathglot (talk) 00:30, 12 December 2019 (UTC) Adding . Mathglot (talk) 00:31, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

Oh, prepositions are quite confusing... I don't like them at all. They are sometimes illogical, they don't always translate precisely from language to language... it is a mess.

So, the "para" means "to". I can't verify now whether the sentence is true or not, only if it is valid or not, and it is valid.

"Para" and "a" (usually) mean "to". According to Google, the preposition "a" is more common in connection with "propina", but the meanung is the same. If the bribe was paid "by" someone or some company, the preposition would be "por" (or, if there is a determiner, "pelo" or "pela"), but I think that the passive voice should be avoided. And look: "por" can also be translated to "for"! Eu faço isso por ti = I do it for you.

Tomorrow I'll check the paragraph in both languages.

"they gave money out, right? If that's true, then why the word para here?" Just like in English, a preposition is required, since.both of our languages don't have grammatical cases. So we need to use a preppsition to distinguish the direct and indirect objects. In English the preposition is to. Or maybe I havent understood your question correctly. --Bageense(disc.) 02:31, 12 December 2019 (UTC)


 * I found this article: pt:Operação Custo Brasil, and it is much clearer about this point. As I expected, Consist was paying money out (to the PT):
 * o Grupo Consist, cobrava mais do que deveria e repassava 70% do seu faturamento para o PT e para políticos.
 * This makes perfect sense, and is exactly as I expected; a private company overcharging to create a slush fund (caixa dois) and using that to pay bribes to politicians to get some kind of favor. They say, ...para o PT, e para políticos.  This is what I expected. From this info, I know how to translate it now, so the translation problem is solved.
 * My grammar problem with understanding Portuguese prepositions is not quite solved, as I still don't know what para is doing in the first example, and it seems like the original quote cited above should have been written using the preposition por and not para, like this:
 * A Polícia Federal suspeitava da existência de pagamento de propina de 100 milhões de reais por essa empresa...
 * But they didn't; they wrote, ...para essa empresa... and I still don't understand why. But, it's not so important; the important thing is that I understand what they meant to say, and that the article is translated correctly; and that problem is now solved.  Thanks! Mathglot (talk) 08:15, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Well, I'm glad the problem has been solved. By the way, I've translated another section called "Back on Track". And 100 milhões de reais por essa empresa is simply wrong. The prepositions can be either "para" or "a". "Por essa empresa" is correct if it means to pay "for" something. That means that they bought the company, which is certainly not the case here. Cheers. --Bageense(disc.)' 14:31, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

Jornal do Brasil
this is the publisher of a reference (currently 84) which first arises in the Ecuador item of the Abroad section. The url in the pt wiki redirects to itself or something; basically does not appear. When I googled the article title I found it here ->|here. It isn't clear to me whether this is another newspaper republishing syndicated content, or an edition of the Jornal do Brasil that the pt.wiki gives as the publisher. For now, leaving the publisher as reported by the pt.wiki with the url that works, but I am not certain this is accurate, so could someone who speaks better Portuguese figure this out for me please? Thanks Elinruby (talk) 02:09, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
 * If we're talking about what's now note 89, yes, the current link in that note is to a regional newspaper CorreioMS which is reprinting someone else's article. The source is actually cited (but no hyperlink) at the end. This is it: "" in Mundo ao Minuto which is the international section of Notícias ao Minuto. No one is crediting Jornal do Brasil. That's all I know ... Andrew Dalby 09:16, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
 * thank you for the information. If sounds like Noticias ao Minuto syndicates its content then? Like the Wall Street Journal does? If so it should be the agency, which as I understand it is used for content like Reuters and AP? I will try to straighten this out if that's right. Untangling something else right now. Thanks. It's a minor point, but I do strive for accuracy Elinruby (talk) 21:25, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

tuition=recurring payment as in Mesalao?
I keep running into something Google is translating as "tuition". Is this a euphemism like "tips"=bribes? It occurs in several sections I have been in recently, but here it is for example in the Peru item in the Abroad section:

"Onde as investigações estão mais avançadas, a Odebrecht teria desembolsado verbas milionárias em propinas entre 2005 e 2014, sendo 20 milhões de dólares"

I asked this question earlier, but it was buried in several others, and I guess got overlooked. I would like a confirmation please from one of the Portuguese speakers, thanks. Elinruby (talk) 02:55, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
 * "tuition" clearly seems to be a wrong translation. A tuition is not a crime. Propina means bribes. --Bageense</b><sup style="color:#AA0000;">(disc.) 14:35, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
 * thank you for confirming. I had come to that conclusion. This is one of the reasons I said that just reading my work for accuracy is invaluable, because I really to need to do it as MT. However, I think I am catching most of these, if not all, just from banging my head on the wall. Ther question is resolved as far as I am concerned. Elinruby (talk) 21:54, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
 * But see also the section below. Mathglot (talk) 08:38, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

marqueteito
just noting a guess here; I think it means marketer. Aha, looks like a typo; marqueteiro does mean marketer. This arises in the El Salvador item in the Abroad section, with respect to João Santana. Based on that page it looks like this is a good guess; but it *is* a guess, which I am noting here based on an abundance of caution Elinruby (talk) 03:49, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Marqueteiro is someone who makes ads. They know how to adversise a product or even a government. Just a quick answer... I don't have much time. --<b style="color:#000000;font-family:Rockwell;">Bageense</b><sup style="color:#AA0000;">(disc.) 14:36, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
 * thanks. I went with publicist, which is a related meaning. But it is nice to have the confirmation. Question is resolved as far as I am concerned. Elinruby (talk) 21:57, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

Operation names in English
Just wanted to start a section where I can quickly note down English names of different operations as I come across them in reliable English sources. This will give us more confidence in using English names than translating the operation names ourselves. I'll just add them as I find them; please feel free to do the same. Mathglot (talk) 20:11, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

Note that Agencia Brasil is a good place to look for English operation names; the following search may help: I'm changing the order of these so that they are alphabetical. That means, the sig timestamps may be out of order. Mathglot (talk) 00:36, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
 * ; example:

Please add your entry in alphabetical order of Portuguese operation name, to facilitate look-up, and sign as usual ~.
 * Câmbio, Desligo – Over and Out. "An operation launched today (May 3) by Brazil's Federal Police, code named “Câmbio, Desligo” (Over and Out), ..."
 * Catilinárias – Catiline Orations. These were speeches given by Cicero in 63 BCE. Mathglot (talk) 02:01, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Cui bono? – Who Benefits? "...a spinoff of Operation “Cui Bono?” (Who Benefits? in Latin)" Brazzil.com Mathglot (talk) 21:07, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Custo Brasil – Brazil Cost. "Police searched 40 places in five different states and sought to arrest 10 other people with Thursday’s operation, dubbed &apos;Brazil Cost,&apos; Reuters Mathglot (talk) 21:26, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Descontrole – Out of Control. "The operation, dubbed Descontrole (Portuguese for &apos;out of control&apos;), is a spinoff of Operation Car Wash in Rio de Janeiro,"EBC Mathglot (talk) 20:35, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Eficiência  – Efficiency. "... two money dealers closer to Rio's ex-governor who were denounced during Operação Eficiência (Operation Efficiency), launched in January 2017."
 * Pedra no Caminho – ?? Under discussion; see section . Mathglot (talk) 02:05, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Sangue Negro – Black blood. "The Operation Black Blood investigates money embezzled from Petrobras." Mathglot (talk) 10:42, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Tesouro Perdido – Lost Treasure. "The cash was found during the exercise of a search and seizure warrant issued by a Brasília court under Operation Lost Treasure" Brazzil.com, Brazil Monitor
 * Vidas Secas – Barren Lives. Not the obvious literal: "Dry Lives". This is based on a ten-to-one or more preference for the term "Barren Lives", which comes from the 1963 novel and film, both of which appeared as "Barren Lives". "Like so many neo-realist movies that came out of the American depression of the 1930's, "Barren Lives," with the best of intentions, ultimately makes poverty photogenic in contrasting tones of black-and-white. NY Times. Mathglot (talk) 07:16, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

stone in the way/stone in the road
Bageense seems to disagree with me on this, and normally I would bow to his Portuguese expertise, but "Stone in the Way" strikes me as awkward. Admittedly I am basing my translation on cognates (Camino in Spanish is definitely a road) and perhaps there is a shift in meaning with the Portuguese caminho. However, while "way" does mean road in English in a way, it is a rather antiquated meaning. He seems quite firm about this, but I am inclined to think that either he or I misunderstands something. Just noting it as a question; any drive-by copy-editing I do is of course open to discussion. Input welcome Elinruby (talk) 22:42, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
 * In English, the term "stone in the road" sounds familiar to me as an expression, in a way that "stone in the way" does not. Would be good to see more examples of the original pt expression in different contexts. Also, knowing how they chose this operation name could help. Mathglot (talk) 10:17, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

Bribes and kickbacks
The term propina keeps cropping up in most of the operations on the pt side, but this can actually have two meanings in English, either bribe or kickback. Some reliable English news stories about some of these operations, like this Reuters article on Brazil Cost, use kickback. The two terms are not synonymous in English, although they are closely related. If you go into a Consulate and hand an official a bag of cash, in return for a visa, that's a bribe. If you're a company that makes widgets, and you talk to the director of procurement of the Defense Department and agree to sell them widgets for an inflated cost but in reality you secretly pass a percentage of each invoice back to the director's personal account, that's a kickback. In the first case, money is going in one direction, in the second, it's going in two directions, which I think is maybe the defining characteristic of a kickback. The money that goes to the director, is also a bribe; that's the portion of the invoice that is kicked back to him. Btw, pt also has soborno, but I'm not aware if there's any difference between that and propina, other than the latter also has other meanings, like 'fee' or 'tip' and soborno doesn't, afaik. (Some sources talk about kickbacks being more incremental, and attached to ongoing invoices. Others mention that a bribe is connected with official action, whereas a kickback doesn't have to be.) Since many of the fraudulent schemes involving money exchanges in Car Wash are for contracts of various kinds and involve money going in two directions, I think the more accurate translation for many cases of propina in the article is actually kickback; but we'd have to go through them case-by-case, to make sure. From google ngrams: the top noun postpositions with "bribery" (1950-2008) are: scandal, charges, case, laws, scheme, statute, attempt. For "kickback", it's: statute, scheme, payment, scandal, laws, arrangements, money. Mathglot (talk) 10:56, 13 December 2019 (UTC)


 * I agree with all of the above. I am still trying to fix the places where Google got a headache and called it tuition, but if I can determine it's one or the other as I do that and I guess mmm I could html comment "checked" or something...Elinruby (talk) 13:23, 14 December 2019 (UTC)
 * "Tuition", hah! No headache, that's normal behavior in automatic translation. You can always do a regex edit to change all of them to "bribe" (the broader term, and never wrong in this context) and go back later and tweak some of them to "kickback" for those cases where it's accurate. Mathglot (talk) 17:24, 14 December 2019 (UTC) I guess you must have fixed them all already; there's no occurrence of "tuition" now in the Draft. Mathglot (talk) 17:30, 14 December 2019 (UTC) Oh, just noticed your section on above; sorry I missed that before.  Hope all is clear, now. Mathglot (talk) 17:52, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Architecture
Is the current strategy to translate first, perhaps expand upon? But maintain a correspondence from the portuguese to the English article? I am ok with whatever, but want to touch base in case, so we don't step on each other. I don't want to inconvenience someone else. A couple of points for discussion:
 * I propose to move the current "Abroad" section to the "Phases" page,as well as 'Operation Xepa' and any thing else that has a header on the Phases draft. The pt.wikipedia has a separate article for "Phases Abroad", which is what this section probably eventually be, but it's been a busy news cycle and it's currently easier for me to work on this stuff if it's only two more pages vs three. Also, the pt.wiki's Phases Abroad page also has a timeline with a bunch of names and organizations and legal actions that probably don't have an article on the en.wikipeadia. Not currently up for it, any help welcome there.
 * That said, I usually wikilink or ill as I go, and am bringing text into various sections from other sources than the pt.wiki article. Let me know if there is an issue with that

PS - Huawei and USMCA need huge amounts of help and the article on 5G is probably worse Elinruby (talk) 12:50, 14 December 2019 (UTC)


 * This seems like a follow-up to this discussion above. The original architecture mimicking the division into two articles (this one, and "Phases") was merely a convenience for translation, and I was, and am, by no means married to it. I even had some concerns whether that division was artificial, and imposed by pt-wiki editors looking for a convenient way from keeping the article from getting too big. That's a valid concern, but if the division was artificial, that would mean that we are not bound to that same organization here, even if we do follow it in the beginning, merely for the sake of getting the translation done.  However, in examining further (and you can see some of the results of that examination in other sections above), I found that the "offshoots/phases" division is a real one; that is, it reflects both what reliable sources say (not only in Portuguese, but also in English), and those media reports in turn, reflect what the investigation itself was and is doing.
 * That is, the distinction between phases and offshoot operations is a real one, not invented at Wikipedia. That real distinction doesn't bind us to an architecture of two articles, necessarily; there would be a lot of ways to do it, including one huge article, as long as phases and offshoots were identified clearly; another might be, one article per year. But the way the pt-wiki writers decided to do it, seems good enough to me, at least for starters till the translation is finished. We can always take another look then, and see if it makes sense to divide up the topic a different way.
 * Given the current division, 'Operation Xepa' definitely belongs in "Phases". Haven't considered the "Abroad" section, so don't have an opinion about it yet. I think it's fine for us to have just two articles instead of three if that makes sense; the only thing I'd say about moving the "abroad" stuff, is that Phases all are identified with the word "fase" among the prosecutors, and have phase numbers (and most have operation names as wel) so as long as the operations abroad are identified with their own Phase number, it's fine to move them to that page. If they don't have a phase number, then it seems like they're better off here. Mathglot (talk) 17:46, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Quick question about our translation
It'd make more sense to translate pt:Fases da Operação Lava Jato first. I thought it already had been translated. The article is about the actual phases of the operation, and not just its developments or offshoots.--<b style="color:#000000;font-family:Rockwell;">Bageense</b><sup style="color:#AA0000;">(disc.) 18:08, 14 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, it would; but this article was started first, and that's just the way things ended up. Being an all-volunteer project, things don't always happen the way they "should". Also, there's WP:NODEADLINE. Mathglot (talk) 19:51, 14 December 2019 (UTC)