Loanwords in brazilian automotive brochures: contribution of descriptive translation studies to the understanding of the phenomenon

Abstract

Promotional materials of products in Brazil frequently resort to the use of loanwords. The studies available about this phenomenon usually privilege a linguistic system by just underestimating the importance of the passage from one system to the other through translation. Through methods arising from Descriptive Translation Studies, we have analyzed Peugeot’s brochures’ systemic position, and we have identified certain patterns in the loanwords used in the materials released in Brazil. We have verified that the selection of the translated textual models is more determinant than the loanwords’ linguistic origin to explain its presence in the Brazilian catalogues. The results significantly renew the classic explanations concerning the main part of the multinational companies (including non-Anglo-Saxon companies) as foreign lexical items’ importation agents in the country’s linguistic system.