Tim Burton’s The melancholy death of oyster boy & other stories:

criticism and translation

Abstract

This paper resultsfrom a research on translation criticism and practice, accomplished in the post-graduation program of the Federal University of Paraná (Brazil), from 2011 to 2013, and aims at sharing  the results, experiences and observations on translating practice which emerged therefrom. Our practice focused on a critical reading of O triste fim do pequeno Menino Ostra e outras histórias, Márcio Suzuki’s translation of The melancholy death of Oyster Boy & other stories, written by director and painter Tim Burton. In order to do so, we have undertaken a critical reading of the book within the broader context of Burton’s filmography. After a brief analysis of his movies, we noticed this movement of emphasizing the characterization of the characters, as well as some recurrent aspects when constructing them. Keeping these facts in mind, we carried out a critical reading of the versified storybook and noticed that these characters are constructed in a similar way, so we undertook a critical reading of the Brazilian translation, in order to check in what aspects that reading in which Suzuki’s translation is based on was similar or different from ours. As the analysis of the translated text pointed out to a reading that was different from ours, although equally justifiable, we tried to summarize the critical principles to a new translation project, in those terms idealized by French theoretician Antoine Berman (1995), considering these constitutive aspects of Burton’s esthetics in the terms we have verified.