Translating completeness: a corpus-based approach

Abstract

The aim of this research is to show the results of an analysis of the sense of completeness in translations of English into Portuguese regarding the words complete, entire, full and whole as adjectives in texts from parallel corpora; and to carry out studies of the structure and communicative use of these words in the two languages on the basis of the corpus. The aim of analyzing translated texts was not to reveal translation choices, but rather to use the work of translators as a resource for contrastive analysis and the study of language differences (variations). The analysis has applications within lexicography, language teaching, translation studies and translator training. It is a study about the meanings, uses and collocations of the words related to completeness in both languages. From the data collected from websites, it was intended to show that the use of corpora enabled us to refine our research techniques through more detailed and quantitative analyses because they create opportunities for more reliable and objective findings