This short paper addresses the issues of literalness and revisión in literary translation. The case in point is my own translation of James Joyce's Dubliners into Brazilian Portuguese, published in Brazil in the early 1990s. The notion of literal translation is a long-standing controversy in Translation Studies, having been either defended in the name of accuracy or attacked, dare I say, in the name of freedom. The phrase "literal translation" has been deployed in different ways. Sometimes, "literal translation" is understood as "word-for-word translation". Drawing on the notion of "unit of translation", J. C. Catford, for one, argues that literal translation takes word-for-word translation as its starting point, although because of the necessity of conforming with target-language grammar, the final target text may display group-for-group or clause-for-clause, striving for communicative equivalence (25). As a translation strategy, no doubt, literary translation has its uses and its champions. A literal approach is, for example, generally useful for translating technical texts and legal documents, and the technique can also provide language learners with useful insights into target-language structures. And in literary translation, too, the approach has its champions. Vladimir Nabokov defines literary translation as "rendering, as closely as the associative and syntactical capacities of another language allow, the exact contextual meaning of the original". He also claims that only this strategy can be considered "true translation" (viii). Walter Benjamin, in turn, submits that the kinship of languages is more clearly highlighted in a literalist approach to translation. But literal translation has also had detractors. Eugene Nida argues that "since no two languages are identical [...] it stands to reason that there can be no absolute correspondence [...]. Hence there can be no fully exact translations" (156). Moreover, Ernst-August Gutt points out the near impossibility of reproducing in the target text meanings that are only implicitly present in the source text. And George Steiner comments that "far from being the most obvious, rudimentary mode of translation, "literalism" or as Dryden called it, metaphrase, is in fact the least attainable (324).
This essay addresses ways in which cultural translation/ transposition can ultimately bring about a positive "desacralisation" of Shakespeare's Word. The discussion starts from the notion of Shakespeare's Word as "sacred" and of sacred writings as highly sensitive language, and proceeds to overview the importance of the notions of denotation, connotation, and context in translation. Then, the essay offers working definitions of cultural translation or cultural transposition, and of non-literal translation. Finally, the essay highlights the author's main aims in translating Shakespeare's theatre and offers a few examples of cultural translation/transposition in his own rendering of Shakespeare's drama into Brazilian Portuguese. Keywords: Shakespeare. Theatre. Cultural translation/transposition. Brazilian Portuguese. DESSACRALIZANDO O "VERBO" SHAKESPEARIANO POR MEIO DE TRADUÇÃO/TRANSPOSIÇÃO CULTURALResumo: Este ensaio aborda procedimentos por meio dos quais a tradução/transposição cultural pode, em última instância, elicitar uma benéfica "dessacralização" do Verbo shakespeariano. A discussão parte da noção
The influence which current views on dramatic theory and technique have exercised upon theatrical productions has long been the object of scholarly inquiry. Peter Brook's The Empty Space (1968; rpt. 1990), for instance, can be a helpful tool in the study of Brook's own 1978 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Antony and Cleopatra, with Glenda Jackson and Alan Howard in the title roles. The production followed by eight years the now legendary "circus" Midsummer Night's Dream which Brook had staged for the RSC in 1970, and reviewers were virtually unanimous in praising the production's innovative, swiftly-paced set. Nevertheless, many objected that Brook's deromanticized reading "reduced" the stature of Jackson's Cleopatra and Howard's Antony, thus undermining their tragic fall. Accounting for production decisions, mainly set design and staging, and focusing upon Brook's/Jackson's representation of Cleopatra, I argue that Brook's rendering is a radical interpretation, mainly in the light of his own views as expressed in The Empty Space (TES), especially in terms of his discussion of Shakespeare mixing outer and inner worlds-" Rough" and "Holy Theatre"-and his attempt to circumvent "Deadly Theatre". The argument is counterpointed throughout with commented illustrations of the production's critical reception.
Discorrer sobre a recepção da poesia dramática de William Shakespeare em tradução no Brasil requer um panorama que abranja literatura, cinema e televisão – além do teatro, é claro. E qualquer avaliação, por mais breve que seja, da chegada de Shakespeare entre nós não pode prescindir de referência à história de rebatimentos culturais europeus desde o início do nosso processo de colonização. Embora os portugueses tenham iniciado a colonização já em 1500, teatros e outros tipos de espaços formais para as artes só se tornaram disponíveis nos centros políticos do Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Salvador e Manaus no século XVIII.
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