Translating Russian Literature in Brazil

Abstract

In this chapter, I study the history of translating Russian literature in Brazil from the 1930s to the 1970s. This period witnessed the formation of a network between the publishing market, cultural journalism, local translators, émigré translators and the University of São Paulo. I comment on the following aspects: 1) the first (1930s) translations made directly from Russian, for Iurii Zel’tsov, a Jewish-Russian emigrant publisher from Riga; 2) debates during the 1940s on the role of the “French” paradigm of treatment of Russian texts and on the need to professionalize the work of translators from the Russian language; 3) the central role of the series of Dostoevsky’s works by the publisher José Olympio; 4) the debate around Lila Guerrero’s translations of Maiakovskii 5) Boris Schnaiderman’s early translations and the creation of the Russian literature course at the University of São Paulo; 6) the connection of this Brazilian scene to a transnational network of translators (Robel, Ripellino and others). The essay concludes with a commentary on Boris Schnaiderman’s 1974 Habilitation thesis (his translation of Dostoevsky’s story ‘Mr Prokarchin’), which consolidated his style of translating Russian literature into Brazilian Portuguese.