Uma investigação baseada em corpus sobre padrões de estilo de um tradutor literário relacionados ao conectivo that/zero e a formas fixas e semi-fixas, observados em Discovering the World

Abstract

The topic of this study is the literary translator’s style, related to the individual use of recurrent patterns of linguistic behaviour. Considering the lack of a consensual definition for style even in the fields of literary criticism and stylistics, this article drew upon Baker’s understanding of style (2000: 246-7) as a ‘fingerprint’ identifiable in the translated text through a variety of linguistic elements. In order to investigate the style of the literary translator Giovanni Pontiero, I adopted his English translation Discovering the World as the main corpus and Clarice Lispector’s original Brazilian fiction A Descoberta do Mundo as the reference corpus. Instead of examining whether the author’s style was adequately transferred to the target text, this article aims to identify Pontiero’s distinctive style as evidenced in the translated text corpus by the use of recurring patterns involving structures of the reporting verb say. The task was carried out semi-automatically in a combination of manual and computerized analysis performed with the WordSmith Tools and Multiconcord software packages. The observation of individual, recurrent and preferred stylistic patterns revealed Pontiero’s stylistic choices, either conscious or unconscious, of the patterns of SAY involving both the optional that/zero and patterns of fixed and semi-fixed expressions, all of which occurred more frequently than in the corresponding source text.