Restaurant Reviews in Brazil and the USA: A Feast of Cultural Differences and Their Impact on Translation

Authors

  • Rozane Rodrigues Rebechi Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
  • Rayane Ramos Nunes Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
  • Laura Rodrigues Munhoz Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
  • Nathália Oliva Marcon Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.mut.v14n2a05

Keywords:

Restaurant review, genre, functional translation, corpus linguistics, conventionality

Abstract

This article shares the findings from a study aimed to create a bilingual English-Portuguese glossary of terms and collocations characteristic of restaurant reviews, especially concerning the search for transla­tion equivalents. Relying on the assumptions of corpus linguistics, we conducted both quantitative and qualitative analyses to investigate a comparable corpus of texts published in the United States and Bra­zil. The manual investigation of simple and compound keywords retrieved with Sketch Engine showed that the functional translation of texts pertaining to the genre restaurant review in that pair of languages goes far beyond terminological equivalence, since it should also consider the specificities of the genre in both languages and cultures. We observed that not only are American texts much longer than their Brazilian Portuguese counterparts, but the former are also significantly more technical than the latter. Moreover, restaurant reviews unveil a number of cultural differences when written in different languag­es for a distinct target audience. To produce texts that work properly for the target reader, the translator should be aware of the conventions of this domain in both languages and cultures before deciding what aspects should be maintained, adapted, or omitted. In addition, elements that do not recur in both lists also reveal cultural differences between texts of a similar genre. We concluded that corpora may not only help translators to interpret source language texts, but also assist them in finding solutions for the translation process.

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Author Biographies

Rozane Rodrigues Rebechi, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul

Professor and researcher at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil. She is currently chair of the Brazilian Association of Researchers in Translation (ABRAPT) and Associated Partner to the European Masters in Technology for Translation and Interpreting (EM TTI). Rozane coordinates two projects at UFRGS: the first, started in 2016 to be finished in 2021, ‘Culinária para Fins Acadêmicos: compilação de um corpus de textos culinários com foco na tradução’, focuses on the Portuguese-English translation of culinary texts; the second, ‘Avaliação da tradução de artigos biomédicos no par de línguas português-inglês para aprimoramento de tradutor automático’, started in 2019 to be finished in 2021, aims to improve a memory tool for the translation of biomedical articles.

Rayane Ramos Nunes , Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul

A fourth-year undergraduate student at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil. She is pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Linguistics, majoring in Portuguese/English translation. She has been a team member in Professor Rozane Rebechi’s research project “Culinária para Fins Acadêmicos: compilação de um corpus de textos culinários com foco na tradução” since 2019.

Laura Rodrigues Munhoz , Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul

An undergraduate student at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil. She is currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Linguistics, majoring in Portuguese/English Translation. She is a team member in Professor Rozane Rebechi’s research project “Culinária para Fins Acadêmicos: compilação de um corpus de textos culinários com foco na tradução”.

Nathália Oliva Marcon , Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul

An undergraduate student at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) — Brazil, currently pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Linguistics, majoring in Portuguese/English. She is a team member in Professor Rozane Rebechi’s research project “Culinária para Fins Acadêmicos: compilação de um corpus de textos culinários com foco na tradução”. Nathália is also a MD, specialized in pediatrics, graduated from Universidade de Caxias do Sul (UCS) — Brazil.

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Published

2021-07-13

How to Cite

Rodrigues Rebechi, R., Ramos Nunes , R. ., Rodrigues Munhoz , L. ., & Oliva Marcon , N. (2021). Restaurant Reviews in Brazil and the USA: A Feast of Cultural Differences and Their Impact on Translation. Mutatis Mutandis. Revista Latinoamericana De Traducción, 14(2), 372–396. https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.mut.v14n2a05

Issue

Vol. 14 No. 2 (2021): New research perspectives in specialized translation in Romance languages: comparative, lexical, phraseological, discursive and didactic aspects.

Section

Research Articles

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