SOUSA, S. M. A.; http://lattes.cnpq.br/6639728080779002; SOUSA, Sheyla Mayra Araujo.
Resumo:
The translations of literary works written in Brazilian Portuguese still happen in a lower
frequency than the translations of English literary works, for example, which is the world’s
most popular language. However, some authors have prominent place in the list of
Brazilian writers having their work translated into English. Jorge Amado, who in 1996 was
considered by the Guinness Book of Records the world’s most translated writer, is one of
them. Jorge Amado’s writing portrays the Brazilian culture, especially from Bahia, being
considered one of the main promoters of Brazilian regional culture to the world. The
objective of this research was to study the translations of cultural terms in Gabriela, Clove
and Cinnamon, book translated into English by Taylor and Grossman (1962) from Jorge
Amado’s most translated work, Gabriela, Cravo e Canela, published in 1958. In order to
answer the questions on the strategies used and the implications of the translations of
cultural terms when it comes to Brazil’s cultural representation to English language
countries. Through the cultural terms, Jorge Amado’s readers enter Brazilian regional
culture, and experience our typical food, dances, the religious syncretism, the mixture of
races and other aspects of life in the Northeast of Brazil. The analysis of the translations
of cultural terms was based on Venuti’s (1995) Domestication and Foreignization
strategies, and the theoretical framework brings concepts and questions on translation
and culture, having as basis, mainly, Laraia (2001), Santos (1987), Bauman (2012), Katan
(1999) and Newmark (1988); national representation on translation, following specially the
discussions of Hall (2005) and Venuti (1995; 1999; 2005); and literary translations mainly
based on the contributions of Gorovitz (2011), Jin (2003), Bassnett (2005) and Landers
(2001). This is a descriptive research in the Translation Studies area, having a quantiqualitative
nature. First, an identification of cultural terms and their translations in the
source and target texts was made and they were organized in parallel corpus with their
etymologies and the meanings of their translations. After the terms and translations were
counted, the terms were organized in categories. Then, the cultural terms and their
translations were categorized as domestication and foreignization. Then, in the qualitative
analysis some excerpts from both strategies were analyzed in detail having the
discussions of the theoretical framework as basis. Results have shown a higher use of
domestication, highlighting the neutralization of Brazilian cultural aspects, and,
consequently, affecting the representation of the regional Brazil constructed by Jorge
Amado. The effects of the studied translation are the false sense of fluidity while reading,
and the impairment of the knowledge of the source culture by the reader, who do not have
access to most cultural terms in the translation.