Übersetzung Deutsch-Portugiesisch und ingressive Verbalperiphrasen

Abstract

Using data from a translation corpus, the use of the ingressive verbal periphrases começar a, pôr-se a, desatar a and passar a + infinitive in Portuguese translations of German-language texts is examined. A study is made of the extent to which Portuguese verbal periphrases can be traced back to similar structures in the source text and what other features of the German texts condition the translation through an ingressive verbal periphrase. From the analysed data it emerges that the German verbs beginnen/anfangen are found in only about 30 % of the evidence in the source text, and only in the case of the periphrase começar a do they play a role in the majority of the evidence (just over 50 %). In all other cases, other aspects of the source text prove important in explaining the translation by a verbal periphrase, namely other verbs and adverbial expressions to mark the beginning of a situation, or narrative sequences and other contextual factors without specific linguistic marking, as well as the interaction between verbal periphrases and tenses. The corpus analysis makes it possible to identify the characteristics of the individual periphrases, to compare them with already existing descriptions of meaning and to supplement them if necessary.