THE TRANSLATIONAL DOING IN ABSTRACTS OF SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS: CONTRIBUTIONS OF FRENCH SEMIOTICS

Abstract

The objective of this work is to discuss about some aspects of French Semiotics theory which converge with Translation Studies, in order to widen the perspectives about that study field and, thus, contributing to Semiotics research development on Translation area. This article, besides following an analytical-descriptive view, is able to apply those concepts to a previously determined corpus — more specifically four abstracts of scientific papers related to Psychology area. Through an enunciative perspective, the translator is understood as a “coparticipating” agent in meaning construction of the translated utterance, not limited to the translation of meanings already given. The enunciation praxis of translation, from this angle, can be directed by a more conservative and literal guidance, specially focused on referential texts, or a more libertarian positioning, mainly in literary and poetical texts. After analyzing the corpus, it was realized that, despite of literalness is configured as the prevailing practice, it was intersected by more liberal gestures, which required changes on lexicogrammatical structure of source text and, in some cases, more significant semantic reorderings, although the original text’s meaning essence has been preserved.