It’s a pandemic! Critical discourse analysis of headlines and leads about Covid 19 and their translation from English to Portuguese on BBC News website

Abstract

This paper aims at carrying out an analysis on discourse differences found in translated media texts from English to Portuguese, regarding the effect and the tone of the message from the original into the translated version (REISS; VERMEER, 2014; NORD, 2016); more specifically considering the representation of social actors under the Critical Discourse Analysis perspective (FAIRCLOUGH, 1989, 2003, 2013). The texts chosen were the headlines and leads from 3 pieces of news published by BBC England and 3 pieces of news translated and published by BBC Brazil which covered the same topics related to the pandemic of Covid-19. The analysis points out to possible variations of effect and tone of the discourse pertaining to the journalistic pieces, showing that translation may be subject to ideological perspectives closely bound to the contexts of culture of the target audience.