Translation of Cultural Items in Vidas Secas/Barren Lives: a Product-Oriented Analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26512/belasinfieis.v11.n1.2022.37246Keywords:
Translation strategies. Descriptive Translation Studies. Norms. Translation Product. Graciliano Ramos.Abstract
Drawing on Descriptive Translation Studies and the concept of norms proposed by Toury (1995/2012), this study aims to analyze the translation of cultural items in the Brazilian novel Vidas Secas (1938), by Graciliano Ramos, and translated into English, Barren Lives (1999), by Ralph Edward Dimmick. More specifically, the study aims at a) identifying the predominant group of translation strategies - syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic – (Chesterman, 1997/2016) used to translate cultural items (Newmark, 1988); b) examining which strategy is the most predominant in the translation of cultural items and c) analyzing if the most predominantly strategy used is related to Toury’s notion of norms. Data collection consisted of four steps: 1) source text reading; 2) identification of cultural items in the source text followed by their insertion in an Excel spreadsheet; 3) target text reading; and 4) selection of the translation given to each cultural item followed by their insertion in the spreadsheet. Data analysis was carried out quantitatively and qualitatively. Results have shown that most strategies used by the translator belong to the pragmatic group. As for the most frequent type of strategy employed to translate the cultural items, the analysis has shown that most of them were translated through the use of Cultural filtering, which means the translator has adapted most of the items to functional or cultural equivalents in the target language. Using Cultural filtering (pragmatic strategy) indicates that the translator was influenced by norms of the target culture, based on ideas, values, and knowledge shared by an English-speaking community.
Downloads
References
Aixela, J. F. (1996). Culture-Specific Items in Translation. In R. Alvarez & M. Carmen-Africa Vidal (Eds.), Translation, Power, Subversion (pp. 52-78). Multilingual Matters.
Arruda, A. P. B. de (2020). Cultural Items in Vidas Secas/ Barren Lives: an Analysis of Translation Strategies [Undergraduate thesis, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco].
Brasiené, B. (2013). Literary Translation of Culture-Specific Items in Lithuanian Translation of Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London [Master’s thesis, Vytautas Magnus University: Department of English Philology].
Chesterman, A. (2016). Memes of Translation – The Spread of Ideas in Translation Theory. John Benjamins Publishing Company. (Original work published 1997)
Costa, P. (2012). Vidas secas: Uma análise crítica da paratextualidade e componentes culturais da tradução para o inglês. Belas Infiéis, 1(2), 83–97.
Guerra, A. F. (2012). Translating Culture: Problems, Strategies and Practical Realities. [sic] – A Journal of Literature Culture and Literary Translation, 3(1), 1–27.
Hashemian, M., & Daghoughi, S. (2016). Analysis of Culture-Specific Items and Translation Strategies Applied in Translating Jalal Al-Ahmad’s by the Pen. English Language Teaching, 9(4), 171–185.
Hatje-Faggion, V. (2011). Tradutores em caminhos interculturais – a tradução de palavras culturalmente determinadas. In C.A.B. Santos, C. R. Bessa, V. Hatje-Faggion & G. H. P. Sousa, Tradução e Cultura (pp. 73–88). 7Letras.
Holmes, J. (1972). The Name and Nature of Translation Studies. In Translated Papers on Literary Translation and Translation Studies (pp. 172–185). Rodopi.
Kerecuk, N. (2016). Book Club: Graciliano Ramos/ Vidas Secas. https://sistemas.mre.gov.br/kitweb/datafiles/Londres/en-us/file/cul-bookclub-04-gracilianoramos.pdf
Melo, C. V. (2017). Mapping Brazilian Literature Translated into English. Modern Languages Open, 1–37.
Morinaka, E. M. (2018). Brazilian Fiction Translated in the United States in the 1940s. Cadernos de Tradução, 38(2), 202–218.
Newmark, P. (1988). A Textbook of Translation. Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.
Pezzini, O. (2005). Análise das estratégias de tradução de cem resumos/abstracts da revista Delta (segundo Chesterman 1997) [Master’s thesis, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina].
Ramos, G. (1999). Barren Lives (R.E. Dimmick, Transl.). University of Texas press. (Original work published in 1938)
Ramos, G. (2017). Vidas secas (135th ed.). Editora Record. (Original version published in 1938)
Toury, G. (2012). Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. (Revised edition, v. 100). John Benjamins Publishing Company. (Original work published 1995)
Zare-Behtash, E., & Firoozkoohi, S. (2010). Culture Specific Items in Literary Translation. Translation Journal, 14(1). https://translationjournal.net/journal/51culture.htm
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 CC BY
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Given the public access to this journal, the texts are free to use but requires the recognition of the original authorship and initial publication in this journal to be properly stated.
 The journal allows the use of works published for non-commercial purposes, including the right to submit the work to publicly accessible databases. Published contributions are the sole and exclusive responsibility of the author(s).Â
