Climb, creep, and fall in Portuguese and French translations

We analyzed 128 samples containing the movement verbs climb, fall, and creep from three English novels and their professional Portuguese and French translations. In their most basic senses, climb and fall encode the path and a manner of motion, while creep conveys only the manner. In 66% of the clim...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Matos, Suellen Alayde da Rocha, Oliveira, Aparecida de Araújo
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2025
País:Brasil
Institución:Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC)
Repositorio:Cadernos de Tradução (Florianópolis. Online)
Idioma:portugués
OAI Identifier:oai:periodicos.ufsc.br:article/100278
Acceso en línea:https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/traducao/article/view/100278
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Translation
motion
climb
creep
fall
tradução
movimento
Descripción
Sumario:We analyzed 128 samples containing the movement verbs climb, fall, and creep from three English novels and their professional Portuguese and French translations. In their most basic senses, climb and fall encode the path and a manner of motion, while creep conveys only the manner. In 66% of the climb contexts, the translators replaced this verb with a path verb in Portuguese and a manner-and-path verb in French. They translated fall as Portuguese cair (75%) and French tomber (50%), and all three verbs express similar information about the path and the manner. Rendering the manner in scenes with creep reached around 70% in both languages. In the translations of climb and fall with a satellite, expressing more than one trajectory, the translators kept only one in the target, corroborating the literature on the subject. In French, though, they kept the two directions in cases with dans. In addition to predictable typological effects according to L Talmy's Motion Typology, the moving figure's volition and animation seem to have influenced the translators' choices in the scenes with fall. We observed intratypological similarities and intertypological differences as expected. However, in French, the maintenance of manner was more prevalent. The French translations generally showed a greater diversity of verb types that conflated manner and path. We restrict our claims to the strategies used for translating the three chosen verbs.