Address pronouns and alternatives

Challenges and solutions when translating between two polycentric languages (English and Portuguese)

Manuela Cook | University of Wolverhampton

Polycentric languages experience variation. Address pronouns and other forms of address constitute an area which is particularly open to national preferences, where the language is influenced by different cultural backgrounds and performs at the service of different social dynamics. In translation work, achieving comparable renderings between the source language and the target language will require a discerning awareness of specific sociological and sociolinguistic characteristics in the relevant places of origin and destination of the text being converted. This chapter examines challenges and proposes solutions for those decoding and encoding between English and Portuguese. It does so using a framework of evaluation deemed to promote insight and using techniques that are transferable to other language pairs, particularly where English is involved.

Keywords: translation and interpreting, source language and target language, polycentric languages, national and regional variation, second-person systems, address pronouns, forms of address, English language, Portuguese language

Published online: 23 July 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.304.04coo

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