Aline Ferreira

Translating from English (L2) into Portuguese (L1) and from Portuguese (L1) into English (L2): An analysis of retrospective protocols

Ferreira (2010) pointed out that in Brazil, independent (freelance) translators regularly translate into English (their L2) simply because clients have difficulty in finding local English-native speakers who would be interested in becoming translators, and looking for translators outside Brazil could be more costly to clients. Furthermore, finding English native speakers outside Brazil who would have solid comprehension skills in Portuguese can also be a challenge. In this case, the question as to whether professionals should work into the foreign language is not an option in many countries (Pavlović 2007): inverse translation is the reality for translators. The objective of this study is to explore directionality in translation by analyzing instances of metacognition through retrospective protocols, considering differences in source texts (ST’s). The type of the STs played a fundamental role in the translators’ behavior. The level of difficulty of the STs may have different implications in the production of the text in both the L1 and L2. It might be the case that translators were more concerned with the source text (e.g., style or lexical aspects) in the direct translation task than in the inverse translation task, since the production in the stronger language might have led them to a higher level of self-criticism in the direct task. Results will be discussed in detail and hopefully will spark researchers’ attention to explore and test directionality in translation, also discussing how inverse translation has been conducted and taught in Brazil.

FERREIRA, Aline (2010): Direcionalidade em tradução: uma investigação do processamento cognitivo de tradutores profissionais em tradução direta e inversa no par linguístico inglês-português. (Unpublished masters dissertation). Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte.

PAVLOVIĆ, Nataša (2007): Directionality in Collaborative Translation Processes. Doctoral dissertation, unpublished. Tarragona: Universitat Rovira i Virgili.