towards an analysis of errors made by university students ... - DSpace

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Introducción a la traductologia. Washington» D.C., Georgetown
University Press, 1 977. p. 266-89 , and by VINAY, 0. P. & DARBELNET,
J. Stylistique comparee du français et de l'anglais. Paris, Didier,
1972, p.96-101. According to these authors a class of words in a
language may be replaced by other class of words in another
language without any interference with the meaning. This can be
better understood if we try to translate HE SHELTERED HIS
CIGARETTE WITH HIS CUPPED HAND or HE MERELY NODDED into Portuguese.
We have been aware of the possible shifts in translation so as to
avoid marking a mistake, or an error where there is not one. In
text number 9 (T9P) administered to the Physics Group, we have the
ngp DUSTY ROOM which has been translated as'( na) poei ra da sala'by
m h h
some students, an example of transposition in which the modifier
DUSTY operates at h in its equivalent Portuguese ngp, without
interfering with comprehension; an adjective in English has been
replaced by a noun in Portuguese. Although the students who
managed to do this class-shift may have done so by guessing, or
just by following the sequence of the elements in English and
achieved their translation into Portuguese without interfering
, with comprehension quite by accident, we have born in mind that
the most important point is to verify whether that 'shift' has
changed the meaning of the ngp in relation to the context in
which it has occurred.,
9 C0RDER, p.360.