Ricerc@Sapienza

The aim of this study is to illustrate the extent to which historical knowledge of a language is
essential when it comes to translation, taking as examples instances of speech, principally in
terms of diachronic variation: the variants of the second-person pronoun, what has been called
the mixture of forms of address between você and tu (both meaning you singular in Portuguese).
It also examines other typical uses of pronouns of address in the 19th century, posing the
pragmatic question of reciprocity and hierarchy, as well as forms no longer in use today. The
texts studied are by Machado de Assis: Quincas Borba, a novel from 1891, and Teoria do Medalhão
(Theory of the Medallion), a short story dating from 1882. This study focuses on an important
aspect hitherto not systematically examined, namely the fact that the original work and
its translation were published in diff erent historical periods. How should this fact be dealt with?
Should the approach be to respect the linguistic and cultural codes of the original, historicising
the translation, or to adopt a modernising position? In relation to Machado de Assis’s texts, the
study will consider literary language from a functional and pragmatic perspective, which situates
the literary text in the context of recreating a process of communication (STEGER, 1982).
My approach takes into consideration semiotic studies from the Tartu School (TOROP, 1995),
and studies about aspects of diachronic and socio-pragmatic variation. The results obtained relate
to the evaluation that the translator must make of a representative corpus of the nature of the
language (including literary language) in the 19th century, bearing in mind aspects of historical
linguistics, stylistics and variation.