Iguais, mas diferentes: em busca de uma interface entre segmentação cognitiva, sistemas de memória de tradução e variação léxico-gramatical no par lingüístico alemão-português

Abstract

This thesis presents a study of the impact a translation memory system may have over the translation process in terms of cognitive segmentation, lexicogrammatical variation (agnation) and explicitation, when professional translators translate from German into Portuguese. The framework of the investigation attempts to merge the theoretical dichotomy between process and product, taking them as a single phenomenon, as the product is considered the final record of a complex process. Six professional translators took part on the experiment, being each of them submitted to two translation tasks the first without a Translation Memory System, and the second one with it. The task realization in both environments was mapped (Dragsted, 2004) through pause analyses (DRAGSTED, 2004; SCHILPEROORD, 1996), and interpreted through a systemic functional frame (HALLIDAY & MATTHIESSEN, 2004; STEINER, 2001).The translation memory systems impact over the process is evaluated and the common sense assumption of interlinguistical standardization conditioned by the program is empirically investigated. Three linguistic categories are focused, namely nominalization, participle constructions, composed nouns and verbs with separable prefixes. The results show that, although the software tends to standardize not only choices, but also segmentation patterns, natural segmentation tends to impose itself. In many cases, translators negotiate their own choices with the options proposed by the memory. The analysis of this negotiation was focused on instances of explicitation, considered under the concept of grammatical metaphor, through its identification in the segmentation process of the target text, as well as through the contrast of different realizations among the translators.