First steps towards managing diatopic variation in a term base : the case of European and Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract EN

If term bases are to be useful for translators, they should not only provide users with terminological équivalents but also with linguistic and extralinguistic information on terms so that translators can choose the appropriate translation équivalent.

But translators also need to make sure that term équivalents are used by the community of experts that they are targeting.

For instance, the Portuguese équivalent of the term accused can be arguido or réu depending on whether one is translating for a Portuguese audience or a Brazilian one.

Although légal terminology is well-known for its complexity and translation challenges due to anisomorphic concept systems, the implications of terminological variation of the diatopic kind for the création of multilingual term bases have yet to be studied more systematically.

Should term bases be organized into languages (i.e.

English version, French version, Portuguese version) or into linguistic communities (i.e.

Canadian English, Canadian French, European Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese)? The paper présents a term base that describes fundamental légal terminology and examines he différences between the terminology that occurs in Portuguese and Brazilian judgmentsin view of their management.