The Translation of Wordplays in a Literary Corpus: A Review of Delabastita’s Framework Based on Corpus Linguistics

Abstract This paper analyzes the translation of wordplay from a literary corpus, the novel “O Xangô de Baker Street” (SOARES, 1995), translated into English by Clifford Landers in 1997, and does so based on the framework of Delabastita (1996) for wordplay’s translation. The study uses the theoretical-methodological approach of Corpus Linguistics and is characterized as “corpus driven” (TOGNINI-BONELLI, 2001). The analysis of the translations showed that Delabastita's framework can cope with only part of the procedures observed in the translation of the wordplay investigated, and as a result, the study proposes to expand the mentioned framework, by means of the addition of four new strategies for wordplays' translation.