“Amici poco amici: os falsos cognatos na tradução do italiano para o português” in Estudos de Tradução, Actas de Congresso Internacional

• Type: Article in International Conference Proceedings Book
• Date: 2003

Authors

Galvão, Elena (Author) FLUP; Sismondini, Alberto (Author) Other

Conference proceedings National

Title: Estudos de Congresso Tradução. Actas de Congresso Internacional

Pages: 295-310

Congresso Internacional de Estudos de Tradução, Universidade da Madeira

Funchal, 17 a 19 de Abril de 2002

Scientific classification

FOS: Humanities > Languages and Literature

CORDIS: Humanities > language sciences > Linguistics > Applied linguistics

Other information

Resumo (PT): After a brief review of the literature on false friends between Italian and portuguese published in Italy and Brazil, this paper describes and analyses an experiment carried out at the Faculdade de Letras of the University of Coimbra and at the Faculdade de Letras of the University of Porto with students of Italian as a foreign language. Twenty-three students of pre-intermediate and advanced level (2nd, 3rd and 4th year of university) were asked to translate from Italian into Portuguese a number of sentences and short passages containing false friends so as to test their awareness of and ability to identify false friends between the two languages. Some of the false friends contained in the the test were interlinguistic homonyms (e.g., burro, birra, palestra, etc.), while others were simply lexemes that look and/or sound similar in the two languages (e.g., aceto, squisita, affamati, etc.); some were high-frequency words while otehrs were less frequent words belonging to a higher register of the language. The analysis of the results obtained shows that , while more advanced students are less likely to fall into the trap of literal translation of false friends, they still make flagrant mistakes, which indicate a fossilization of errors in their language acquisition process (e.g., 100% of these students translated the italian verb 'procurare' by using the Portuguese verb 'procurar'). In general, students also seem to have a very limited ability to analyse the morphology, syntax, and pragmatics of teh texts they are presented with. It appears clear, therefore, that the study of Italian as a foreign language in Portuguese universities calls for a much more regular and systematic study of the linguistic area of false friends. Students' awareness of this phenomenon can be raised especially through the use of translation and corpora work in the language classroom.

Abstract (EN): After a brief review of the literature on false friends between Italian and portuguese published in Italy and Brazil, this paper describes and analyses an experiment carried out at the Faculdade de Letras of the University of Coimbra and at the Faculdade de Letras of the University of Porto with students of Italian as a foreign language. Twenty-three students of pre-intermediate and advanced level (2nd, 3rd and 4th year of university) were asked to translate from Italian into Portuguese a number of sentences and short passages containing false friends so as to test their awareness of and ability to identify false friends between the two languages. Some of the false friends contained in the the test were interlinguistic homonyms (e.g., burro, birra, palestra, etc.), while others were simply lexemes that look and/or sound similar in the two languages (e.g., aceto, squisita, affamati, etc.); some were high-frequency words while otehrs were less frequent words belonging to a higher register of the language. The analysis of the results obtained shows that , while more advanced students are less likely to fall into the trap of literal translation of false friends, they still make flagrant mistakes, which indicate a fossilization of errors in their language acquisition process (e.g., 100% of these students translated the italian verb 'procurare' by using the Portuguese verb 'procurar'). In general, students also seem to have a very limited ability to analyse the morphology, syntax, and pragmatics of teh texts they are presented with. It appears clear, therefore, that the study of Italian as a foreign language in Portuguese universities calls for a much more regular and systematic study of the linguistic area of false friends. Students' awareness of this phenomenon can be raised especially through the use of translation and corpora work in the language classroom.

Language: Portuguese

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific