Taking as a starting point Oswald de Andrade's concept of "anthropophagy" as a metaphor for cross-cultural interactions, this article examines some of the issues involved in translating (or adapting to a different cultural environment) a text that is itself a cannibalisation. Buarque and Guerra's play Calabar: In Praise of Treason (Editora Civilização Brasileira), originally published in 1973, was rewritten in 1979, adapting to the new socio-political climate under which it was to be staged. The writers make use of a number of intertextual sources in order to create a text that demands constant watchfulness of their reader-translator-reader. Introducing this important Brazilian play to Anglophone audiences, this article moves on to explore some of the more practical aspects of translation in general and, in particular, of translating a political stage musical. Drawing on post-colonial theories of translation (and from ideas contained in the play itself) the article makes the case for the ubiquity and indeed necessity of treason as tool in such interactions.
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An analysis of my current practice, this article explores some of the issues surrounding the translation of Sarah Kane's seminal work, Blasted ([1995] 2001), into Brazilian Portuguese. It is an account of the process so far, from the early impulse to translate, through discussions
with the director and actor/producer, and the thoughts and doubts that have plagued me since. A fundamental concern relates to the possibility or need to adapt the setting to a Brazilian (and specifically a Rio de Janeiro) context the problem Hale and Upton (2007) have called the dilemma over
foreignization or domestication (2000: 7) and the implications of that adaptation. As tensions between the specific and the universal are dislocated, do they also become diluted? Even if the setting remains the same, are not the contingencies of production (accents, knowledge of a particular
actor, even the theatre building itself) necessarily relocating an audience's theatrical experience? Where should, then, be the locus of this displacement? In the translation, the production, the performances?
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