Literary translation and linguistic variation in Langston Hughes’ One Christmas Eve

Abstract

In this paper we present a discussion on our translation of Langston Hughes’ (1902-1967) short story One Christmas Eve (1934), from The Ways of White Folks (1934). The aim is to explore possible choices on translating linguistic varieties that represent a speech group in the written text, considering that that these linguistic varieties are legitimate, systematic and that they characterize speakers in fictional texts. We base our analysis on theories about the representation of orality in translation (BANDIA, 2015; ROSA, 2015) and theories that examine linguistic variation, more specifically African American Vernacular English and Brazilian Portuguese (BAGNO, 2012; LABOV, 1972, EZGETA, 2012, LUCCHESI, 2009). At first, we provide the author’s context of writing, racial, ideological and social issues that this text brings into light. Secondly, we discuss the author’s literary phases and the influence of the postulates of Harlem Renaissance and American modernism in the composition of the short story here analyzed and translated. Then, we discuss the use of linguistic varieties in the process of translation (varieties that both source and target text present) and aspects that oriented the choices made in the target text, understanding that our main point is to mark otherness in the text and to avoid a translation that homogenizes and erases identities represented by speech patterns in the literary text. This led us to consider how the act of translation places a text in another culture through a rewriting of a source text, an act that understands language in its cultural and social dimension. Based on those perspectives, we see our translation practice from the point of view that translators have an activist role against the homogenization of languages the erasure of identities of marginalized groups when translators decide to recreate the plurality of textual voices, considering   translation as a privileged place in which two instances meet and are examined with an analytical and critical approach.