Business and Translation as Power Games: the automotive industry in Brazil

Abstract

Corporate translation represents a real paradox for Translation Studies (TS): while the discipline’s academic institutionalization and the origins of many translation training centres are heavily indebted to the globalization movement, fundamental research on communication in the economic pulse of this movement is still underdeveloped. The various impacts (in terms of economy, manpower and prestige) of international operations, which largely depend on multilingualism and translation, represent an excellent motivation for studying multinational companies’ behaviour, especially at the intersection of language and power. With this in mind, the present article focuses on PSA Peugeot Citroën’s activity in the Brazilian market in the expectation that the character of its power structure will be revealed in its external communication. A descriptive methodology was used to analyse all 2013 press releases on its Brazilian corporate website, in comparison with those on Argentinian and International sites, to determine how questions of power can explain textual shifts. The analysis demonstrates the extent of Brazilian publishing autonomy and the subsidiary’s relationships with other corporate divisions. This case study could be considered an illustration of how corporate translation can quickly lead to core issues within TS.

Keywords

• descriptive translation studies
• power
• multinational companies