Landmarks of Economic Terminology: The First Portuguese Translation of Elémens du commerce

João Paulo Silvestre*, Alina Villalva, Esperança Cardeira

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The history of languages is closely related to the history of other human activities. Ideally, hypotheses that are designed for linguistic questions on independent grounds should help to consolidate theories in other knowledge fields, such as the history of ideas. This paper deals with the first Portuguese translation of Forbonnais's Elémens du commerce, considering it as a lexical corpus. The linguistic analysis aims to contribute to the general knowledge about this text and its translations. Furthermore, a lexical analysis of Portuguese data can also be understood in the broader context of Romance languages. To this end, we analysed three linguistic expressions, perceived to be representative case-studies: identifying circulação as a terminological loan, the terminological use of a common word (i.e. género vs denrées) and the contrast between terms from different languages (e.g. matéria prima vs matière première). Translations are obvious tools for communicating new ideas. Carrying out linguistic analyses of translations can help to document how ideas take shape. Furthermore, translation studies provide linguistic evidence that is essential for the study of terminology from a diachronic and inter-linguistic standpoint. Data provided by translated texts helps to clarify the date when neologisms were first introduced in a given language. It also helps to identify possible sources of words and to decode the meaning behind lexical innovation. This paper is an example of the output of a contrastive lexicographic approach to Forbonnais's text.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1189-1201
Number of pages13
JournalHistory of European Ideas
Volume40
Issue number8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2014

Keywords

  • François Forbonnais
  • Portuguese
  • terminology
  • translation studies

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Landmarks of Economic Terminology: The First Portuguese Translation of Elémens du commerce'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this