The translation of journalistic and technical texts from English to Portuguese

Abstract

When systematically compared and studied on a scientific basis, a process of description and analysis of the translation phenomenon in technical and journalistic texts may provide a basic pattern for observing which translation modalities would more frequently occur in these two textual hjpologies in the English to Portuguese direction. From this point-of-view, occurrences showing a higher or lower proximity or distance between the source and target languages may reveal a 'norm', a 'general trend' in the statistical distribution of the modalities in technical and journalistic translation. In order to compare twelve original texts with their respective translated texts, we applied Aubert's model (1984, 1997). In the light of the regularity registered on the levels of the statistical analysis, concerning the absolute and relative distribution of modalities and the ranking correlation, there seems to be a predominant order for the more utilised categories by the twenty-four translators: literal translation, transposition and modulation. According to the results obtained, we may infer a tendency towards more literalism than the use of semantic-stylistic re-elaboration in the translation of technical and journalistic texts. However, the more restricted involvement of the translators does not imply a lower level of difficulty. The selection of an equivalence of function in context may sometimes be highly complex when translators attempt to come to certain specific terms in the area of high technology or in the diversified universe covered by newspapers and magazines and their often puzzling and situational headlines.