Translating motion verbs from english to portuguese: Lexicon and constructions

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-7968.2019v39n2p166

Abstract

Based on Cognitive Linguistics, we investigate the use of motion verbs in English and Brazilian Portuguese basketball broadcasts and its implications for translation. This corpus, which represents a natural context of spoken language, included two National Basketball Association games. We found a total of 104 motion verb occurrences, 51 in English and 53 in Brazilian Portuguese, consisting of 46 different types in English and 26 in Brazilian Portuguese. This suggests that the broadcasts are somewhat equivalent in style, since a similar number of verbs were used in both languages. However, the variety of motion verbs and their meaning were asymmetrical. A wider variety of motion verbs is used in English than in Brazilian Portuguese. Moreover, in English, there is a tendency to use verbs that encode MANNER in the verb root. In Brazilian Portuguese, on the other hand, the preferred verbs are less specific, encode PATH and provide less information about the manner of motion. Such differences are the source of the difficulties for translating
motion verbs from English to Portuguese. For translation studies, this study corroborates the Unique Items Hypothesis, according to which an item is unique in a given language inasmuch as its grammatical contexts are unique in that language.

Author Biographies

Heronides Moura, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Santa Catarina

Possui graduação em Licenciatura em Letras pela Universidade Federal da Paraíba (1985), mestrado em Linguística pela Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (1988) , doutorado em Lingüística pela Universidade Estadual de Campinas (1996) e pós-doutorado pela Sorbonne Nouvelle (2000). É professor Titular da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, onde atua desde 1990. Desenvolve pesquisas nos seguintes temas: semântica lexical, linguística cognitiva, metáfora, e relação entre forma e sentido. Já orientou treze teses de doutorado, vinte e três dissertações de mestrado e dois estágios pós-doutorais. Seu livro mais recente Uma breve história da Linguística (Vozes, 2018), em co-autoria com Morgana Cambrussi. Foi Presidente da ANPOLL (2012-2014) e coordenador da Pós-graduação em Linguística da UFSC (2010-2014). Coordena o NES (Núcleo de Estudos Semânticos)

Lucas Badaracco, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Santa Catarina

Possui Graduação em Letras - Redação e Revisão de Textos (Bacharelado) e Mestrado em Letras (área de Estudos da Linguagem) pela Universidade Federal de Pelotas (UFPel). Desde 2016, é discente de doutorado do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Linguística da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Estuda temas relacionados à categorização na linguagem, com ênfase nas implicações da experiência concreta humana no uso da língua.

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Published

2019-05-28

How to Cite

Moura, H., & Badaracco, L. (2019). Translating motion verbs from english to portuguese: Lexicon and constructions. Cadernos De Tradução, 39(2), 166–183. https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-7968.2019v39n2p166

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Vol. 39 No. 2 (2019): Edição Regular

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