A comparative study of the ideational shifts in the representation of Brás Cubas in Portuguese and Spanish

Abstract

This study examines the ideational shifts related to the main character, Brás Cubas, in Machado de Assis’ novel Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (1881) in comparison with its translation into Spanish, Memórias Póstumas de Blas Cubas, made by Antonio Alatorre (1951). The concept ideational shifts was coined by XXX (2015) and means any change in the transitivity system (HALLIDAY; MATTHIESSEN, 2014) of the target text when compared to the same system adopted in the source text. The software WordSmith Tools was used to classify clauses according to their transitivity types. The results have proved the hypothesis suggested, that the ideational shifts pointed to different forms of representing Brás Cubas, although these changes have not affected the semantic equivalence in the target text.

Full-text of the article is available for this locale: Português (Brasil).