Paraná in the guidebook: a cultural markers analysis

Abstract

Even nowadays, with the access to information through the internet or even by means of apps on the cellphone, the market of printed tourist guidebooks, as a way of advertising tourist destinations, continues to work. In a global scope, one of the most recognized publishing companies is Lonely Planet, with publications about a great number of destinations, in until 11 languages, commercialized in various parts of the world. One of its theme is Brazil. The titles Brazil (2013), in Portuguese, Brasil (2014) and in the Italian guidebook, Brasile (2014) were selected. The manuals were analyzed in a post-doctorate research entitled, “Analyzes of tourist guidebooks about Brazil in the light of the Translation Studies Based on Corpus”. However, the analyzed chapters are just the ones that make up the South of Brazil, that is, Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul. The aim was to analyze the cultural markers with the highest level of keyness, presented in them and its respective translations in the guidebooks in Portuguese and in Italian. Nevertheless, for this article just the chapters referring to Paraná were selected. The theoretical basis were the Corpus Linguistic (Berber Sardinha, 2004), the Translation Studies Based on Corpus (BAKER, 1993, 1995, 1996, 1999, 2000; CAMARGO, 2005, 2007a, 2007b), as well as the studies about cultural markers (AUBERT, 1981, 1995, 2006). It was noted that even on the source language corpus there were markers in Portuguese language, such as “Curitiba” and “Iguaçu”, whereas the toponyms are quite frequent in this textual genre.