*]:pointer-events-auto [content-visibility:auto] supports-[content-visibility:auto]:[contain-intrinsic-size:auto_100lvh] scroll-mt-[calc(var(--header-height)+min(200px,max(70px,20svh)))]" dir="auto" tabindex="-1" data-turn-id="request-68e69ae1-0620-832d-933a-dde262a9f9be-1" data-testid="conversation-turn-22" data-scroll-anchor="true" data-turn="assistant"> Cadernos de Tradução is an international journal in Translation Studies, founded in 1996 by professors at the Federal University of Santa Catarina. The journal publishes original articles, reviews, translation reviews, interviews and translated articles. Currently, Cadernos de Tradução is linked to the Graduate Program in Translation Studies at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (PGET-UFSC) and represents a recognized forum for debates in the field of Translation Studies. The journal is indexed in several national and foreign databases, evaluated as A1, in Qualis Capes and classified with Q1 in Scimago Journal & Country Rank by Scopus. Cadernos de Tradução is part of the SciELO Brazil Collection. The journal's main objective is to publish research results in the field of Translation Studies in Brazil and abroad and to accompany the debate in the area, which is inherently interdisciplinary. It regularly publishes high-quality articles, reviews, and interviews with an effective scientific-academic contribution to Translation Studies. In addition, the criteria adopted for selecting papers are uniqueness, originality, clarity, and relevance to the field. From 2022 onward, the journal Cadernos de Tradução started to publish in a continuous flow following the principles of open science. Cadernos de Tradução is exclusively online and open access, not charging any kind of fees for publication. The journal also has profiles on Facebook and Instagram.
Portal de Periódicos UFSC & Pós-Graduação em Estudos da Tradução, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina
Copyright Notice Authors hold the copyright and grant the journal the right for their articles' first publication, being their works simultaneously licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), which allows the sharing of such works with its authorship acknowledged and its initial publication in this journal. Authors are allowed to enter into separate additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or as a book chapter, with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal).
Mansfield, K. (2023). Êxtase e outros contos. (N. Vidal, Trans.). Antofágica.
Translation Review: Êxtase e outros contos. Translated by Nara Vidal.
Copyright (c) 2025 Cadernos de Tradução https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Spitzer, D. M., & Oliveira, P. (Eds.). (2023). Transfiction and bordering approaches to theorizing translation: Essays in dialogue with the work of Rosemary Arrojo. Routlege.
Book review: Transfiction and bordering approaches to theorizing translation: essays in dialogue with the work of Rosemary Arrojo.
Hernández Gómez, Mª de los A. (Dir). (2023). L'indicible. Déclinaisons du silence, de la censure et de l'autocensure. L'Harmattan.
Book review: L’indicible. Déclinaisons du silence, de la censure et de l’autocensure.
Payàs, G., & Zaslavsky, D. (Eds.). (2023). Perspectivas traductológicas desde América Latina. Bonilla Artigas Editores & Ediciones UCT.
Book review: Perspectivas traductológicas desde América Latina.
Zanettin, F., & Rundle, C. (Eds.). (2022). The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Methodology. Oxford University Press.
Book review: The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Methodology.
Cadera, S. M., & Walsh, A. S. (Eds.). (2022). Retranslation and Reception: Studies in a European Context (Vol. 49). Brill.
Book review: Retranslation and Reception: Studies in a European Context.
Díaz-Cintas, J., & Remael, A. (2021). Subtitling: Concepts and practices. Routledge.
Book review: Subtitling: Concepts and practices.
Toward a so-called narrow redefinition of translation in Translation Studies
With this paper, I aim to show that the central concept of Translation Studies (TS), i.e., “translation”, should be (re)defined “narrowly” as “the process or result of transferring a text interlinguistically”. First, I examine three noteworthy conceptualizations of translation found in TS literature (i.e., Jakobson’s, Toury’s, and Meylaerts & Marais’s). Second, I problematize the notion of “intrasemiotic translation” together with other relevant concepts and thereby highlight terminological as well as conceptual issues surrounding the idea of “translation” in TS. Third, invoking various arguments, I build a case for a so-called narrow and a priori definition of “translation”. Fourth, I give an example of such a definition and further develop my position. Fifth, broadening the scope of the study, I propose that we should keep looking for an overarching concept and discipline that would encompass “translation” as well as other similar objects and phenomena. Last, before wrapping up with concluding remarks, I indicate possible avenues to explore in future studies.
Translation and science communication: Epistemic traditions in evolutionary convergence
Science communication has been a steady effort since the very beginning of science creation and production in the XVII century. Nevertheless, it has attracted special attention since 1980. Normally, it is identified as a bridge between the specialized circle and the general public. This bridge implies transferring information in the same language of scientific knowledge between two different audiences with different contexts and expectations. This communicative process generates images and results of the science coming from discourse. Nonetheless, an epistemic void exists to address science communication from a discursive point of view. On its own, translation, an older profession and an incommensurable process–says Kuhn–has tangible results always to be perfected in which transfer information processes from one context to another in different languages are involved. Due to these apparent but concrete parallelisms, we analyzed science communication and translation as two deeply intertwined discursive phenomena. For this to take place, we will firstly talk separately about science communication and translation, and we will later identify historic and rhetorical similarities, as well as convergence and divergence statements. With both phenomena converging, we will (1) identify possible analogies from a literary approach that allow us to enhance, from a contextualized model, the process of cultural adaptation of science communication and (2) outline possible encounter points in which they can meet as rhetoric and sociolinguistic processes of equal nature. Finally, we will conclude that, despite them coming from different epistemic traditions and against opposite opinions from different authors, both have a history of evolutive convergence, namely, both phenomena are perhaps not homologous, but rather more or less analogous.
Assessment and translation: Reflections on computer-assisted error analysis
For many years, loosely defined assessment methods, based on levels of correspondence between source and target texts and on vague principles of fidelity and equivalence, have prevailed in the field of translation. In many translation education settings, translation assessment continues to rely on the expert's authorized version; that is, the instructor's version still serves as the acceptability standard by which students’ translations are evaluated. Within this context, the need arises to establish clearer and better-defined assessment criteria and methods that can be used both as a basis for feedback and as guidelines for needs-based pedagogical practices. This article seeks to describe and explore the applicability of a componential methodology in more objective assessment processes: computer-assisted error analysis. Through a detailed description of the Translation-oriented Annotation System, the paper demonstrates how error analysis can be integrated into the assessment process in translation education, providing resources for adapting or redesigning curricula and learning materials to address the specific challenges faced by translation students in their linguistic production.
The role of metrics to assess the quality of British teenage language translation into Spanish and Italian using machine translation tools
The rapid evolution of adolescence language, characterized by slang and idiomatic expressions, presents a significant challenge for machine translation systems. Existing research has extensively covered the translation of languages in general; however, there remains a gap in understanding these systems’ ability when faced with adolescent language. This study aims at (i) the evaluation and the comparison of the accuracy of the translations of colloquial language by Bing Translator, DeepL and HelsinkiNLP from English into Spanish and Italian, (ii) the validity and reliability of two different metrics (i.e., BLEU, METEOR) to assess the accuracy and quality of MT tools with informal language, and (iii) the analysis of how specific features of teenage slang influence the ability of online tools to generate precise and comprehensible translations 1000-character excerpts from the Linguistic Innovators Corpus were translated in Spanish and Italian using DeepL, Bing Translator, and HelsinkiNLP and assessed using BLEU and METEOR metrics to verify their quality and reliability. Our findings show that teenage slang poses challenges for all tools, particularly with phrasal verbs and idioms. Our results also reveal that METEOR seems to be more reliable to assess British teenage language into Spanish and Italian.
Performance-based instruction and assessment in translation pedagogy
The quest for an optimum method has for some time now landed translation pedagogy in social constructivism and task-based instruction. For all the agreement that exists on the need to make changes and adapt task-based instruction to translation teaching, there are still theoretical limitations, practical implementation barriers, and contextual mismatches between the tenets of task-based instruction and translation training needs, and research on the procedural details of a translation lesson or the dynamics of a task-based translation classroom remains sporadic, if scarce. In this article, we have drawn on the extant literature on translation competence, translation teaching best practices, a limited-scale study on an earlier version, expert feedback, and our own experience as translation trainers to develop an instructional cycle that may potentially address the foregoing shortcomings. We have proposed a tailor-made performance-based instruction and assessment task cycle that could complement the current proposed task-based instruction designs for translation teaching. We have then borrowed from the concept of the post-method era in language teaching and concluded that the search for a single best method of translation teaching ought to give way to an alternative approach that develops trainees’ translation competence within their unique translation ecology.
"Feedback must be a two-way exchange": A qualitative study of how translation students perceive feedback
In this article we are interested in one of the possible modalities of feedback generated in the training of future translators at university level: the written corrective feedback (WCF) offered by teachers on students' translations. More specifically, using data obtained from two focus groups and a questionnaire, we have explored the perceptions of translation students regarding the features and usefulness of the feedback they received during their degree programme. The results show that students perceive WCF as a unidirectional transmission of information and not as a dialogical learning cycle, as the most current approaches to feedback postulate. They also call for feedback that is precise, informative, orientating and adjusted to student needs. At the same time, they believe that feedback should offer corrections without adopting a reproving tone; it should include explanations about errors in the translation; it should point to where the work successfully fulfils learning goals; and it should incorporate suggestions for improvement that can be applied in future translation tasks. The descriptive findings presented here bear on current teaching practices in the translation classroom and point to possible areas where such practices might be improved to enhance the development by students of translation competencies.
Ecolinguistics and English for translators: A teaching proposal
The importance of integrating sustainability into language education is currently being addressed in English Language Teaching (ELT) and Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). Therefore, the English course for translation trainees could become the moment in which socially engaged language educators can work towards developing a sense of a balanced relationship with nature by tackling the anthropocentric linguistic strategies in the source text. This is favoured by the specific teaching goals of ELT for translator training, involving awareness of variations in meaning, use, and register, and examination of the writer’s attitude and viewpoint. Combining cutting-edge research on teaching English in translator training with TESOL for sustainability, this contribution proposes a lesson plan that implements the theoretical principles connected to teaching sustainability and ecological issues aimed at translator trainees. Ecolinguistics will be used as a methodology to guide the analysis of environmental texts. The goal is to help students develop awareness of form and meaning, which is among the specific translation-oriented English teaching objectives. This article will thus provide English teachers working in translation courses with activities that are specifically created to suit the objectives of linguistic training for translators.
Translating the pandemics: Social practices in translation during a translator's education project
During the COVID-19 pandemic, we were challenged to learn how to face a new virus and the severe disease it potentially caused. Thanks to the collaborative efforts of researchers around the globe, much was discovered about the disease in a short period of time. Initially, however, we faced uncertainties, a lack of reliable information, and significant fear. In this early context of the pandemic, we, the faculty of the Letters course at the Federal University of Bahia, created the extension project Voluntary Translation of Informative Materials Related to COVID-19. The main objective of this project was to translate scientific research on COVID-19 conducted in Brazil into English for free, thereby helping to disseminate local knowledge to the world while developing a pedagogical translation project that connected students with the real challenges faced by society. This article describes the development of the project, some of the results achieved, and the lessons learned. We discuss the importance of a critical translation pedagogy that addresses the needs and challenges of the local social context and is based on collaborative, interactive, and dialogical work. The project involved volunteer students who, under the guidance of faculty members, translated 35 academic texts and informative materials about COVID-19. The experience provided an opportunity for critical, practical, and socially engaged learning, highlighting the importance of the university in scientific production and dissemination and demonstrating the vital role of translation in spreading scientific information during global crises.
The challenges of teaching translation technologies in the AI era
Integrating translation technology (TT) into specialized translation training has long been a challenge for Translation and Interpreting (T&I) undergraduate programmes. However, the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI), particularly generative AI, has intensified the debate on how universities should adapt to technological advancements in the language industry. While the profession rapidly embraces AI-driven tools, higher education institutions face structural, pedagogical, and institutional barriers that hinder their timely incorporation. This study critically examines five key challenges to the integration of TT in Spanish T&I undergraduate programmes: (1) the rigidity of the university system, (2) the heterogeneity of T&I curricula, (3) the lack of adequate physical and digital resources, (4) the need for faculty training in TT, and (5) the persistent gap between academia and the translation market. Drawing on recent literature, this study explores how these challenges impact the feasibility of incorporating TT into translator education and discusses its role in reshaping teaching methodologies. The findings highlight the urgent need for curriculum flexibility, interdisciplinary collaboration, and sustained dialogue between academia and industry. The article argues that a gradual, adaptive approach could mitigate institutional constraints while preparing students for evolving professional realities. Ultimately, this research underscores the importance of fostering a balanced approach between technological innovation and the core competencies of translation, ensuring that future translators can critically engage with AI-enhanced workflows.
Evaluating the effectiveness of translation technology training in Iran: A perception-based mixed methods study
Although evaluating the effectiveness of training courses on translation technology is essential, previous studies have primarily evaluated such courses based on trainee translators’ satisfaction or knowledge acquisition, paying little attention to behavioral changes in trainee translators and the long-term outcomes of the training. Drawing on convergent mixed methods design, this study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of the translation technology course provided by Iranian universities at MA level based on the perceptions of Iranian MA translation students and graduates. To this end, both quantitative and qualitative data were collected from 63 Iranian MA translation students and graduates via two questionnaires. The results, according to the New World Kirkpatrick Model, indicated that the translation technology course provided by Iranian universities at MA level seems to lack training effectiveness. The findings suggest that there possibly exists a gap between what is taught and the needs of the translation market in the Iranian context.
Online terminology resources in medical translation: Practices and perceptions among students and professional translators
The internet and the online resources it provides are essential tools for modern translation practice. In the ever-evolving field of medical translation, using these tools appropriately is especially important when sourcing suitable equivalents for terminology. In this preliminary study, we compare the use of online dictionaries, search engines, corpora, and online translation software by translation students and professional translators. Inspired by our experience of running a funded postgraduate professional medical translation project and based on our own experience as both lecturers in medical translation and professional translators, we designed questionnaires to determine how students and professional translators regard online resources and use them in their work. Our aim is to draw conclusions about how these essential tools are used in practice by postgraduate translation students and professionals in the field of medicine. Our findings will help inform our teaching planning with a view to better preparing students for the world of medical translation.
The perception of Multimedia Translation students on automated translation versus human translation for localising a website
This study describes a pre-experimental and exploratory design developed over two academic years, in which 57 students from a higher education institution were faced with the simulation of a reverse translation project (Spanish-English) for the website of a mock brewery located in the Andalusian city of Cordoba (Spain). The website was created ad hoc for this task and contained a large number of terms related to Andalusian cuisine, as well as cultural references, localisms and idiomatic expressions with a humorous undertone. After performing a creative translation to transfer the cultural and humorous features successfully, participants obtained versions generated with at least two automated translation tools (DeepL or SmartCat, and ChatGPT) to compare their own translations with those generated by machine translation (MT) and artificial intelligence (AI). Finally, they assessed the three target texts through a questionnaire. This paper presents the results obtained from the activity, with the aim of providing an insight into the Multimedia Translation students' perception of the use of MT and AI, specifically regarding five key aspects of the translation process: the overall quality of the target text, terminological accuracy, linguistic coherence and fluency, interpretation of the socio-cultural context and communicative intention, and grammatical and syntactic accuracy. The study confirms that human translation (HT) is rated higher than MT and AI in all the categories, and that this gap is more pronounced when it comes to the subjective aspects of language. More specifically, HT stands out for its coherence, fluency and ability to interpret contextual and socio-cultural factors in communication.
Intralingual respeaking and machine translation for live subtitling: A study on quality and perception
This case study analyzes the quality of live interlingual subtitles produced through a workflow combining intralingual respeaking and machine translation. The study follows a qualitative, descriptive approach. The corpus consists of Spanish subtitles derived from an English-language interview. The NTR model was applied to calculate the accuracy rate and assess additional quality parameters such as delay, reading speed, and audiovisual coherence. Furthermore, the perceptions of 31 participants were collected via a questionnaire designed to measure literal, inferential, and critical comprehension, as well as subjective evaluation of quality factors. The results revealed an accuracy rate of 97.57% (4/10), which falls below the minimum acceptable quality threshold. Participants also reported difficulties related to subtitle legibility, significant delay, and challenges in literal comprehension. The study concludes that, within this workflow, machine translation remains the main barrier to achieving high-quality subtitles, primarily due to frequent errors in form.
Translation and paratranslation 4.0: Analysis on reification in the world of artificial intelligence
Our article is divided into two main interconnected sections, aiming to provide an analysis of the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the translation landscape and the interaction between author, reader, and translator in contemporary society. In the first section, we investigate how AI is redefining these roles and how it affects the information consumption process. We analyze how AI influences content production and reception, as well as the role of the translator in this context. Moving on to the field of ethics, we delve into the complex ethical issues arising from the increasing use of AI in translation. Finally, we highlight paratranslation as a potential mechanism of resistance to the reification process triggered by AI, pointing out the limitations of AI in effectively understanding and translating paratextual elements.
Arabic sentence patterns in interpreted, translated, and original speeches: A corpus-based approach
In simultaneous interpreting (SI) from a subject-verb-object (SVO) language such as English, Arabic simultaneous interpreters are confronted with the dilemma of choosing between the default, dominant, and unmarked V-initial or VSO structure, or a derived and marked S-initial or SV(O) structure. The choice of the former may cause memory overload and omissions or failure due to prolonged time lag and excessive storage of input chunks, especially if structural asymmetry coincides with such extreme factors as high source language (SL) input rate, structural complexity and/or information density. By contrast, the choice of any of the SV(O) structures available in Arabic can help interpreters closely follow the structure of SL discourse and avoid potential risks despite the shift of focus and emphasis brought about by the marked SV(O) structure. Using a corpus-based analysis of an English-to-Arabic parallel multimodal corpus of mediated and non-mediated discourse, the article seeks to determine which structure is used more frequently in simultaneously interpreted speeches compared to translated and original ones. The results indicated the dominance of the S-initial structure in SI, whereas the V-initial structure dominated translations and original speeches and that the choice of structure was impacted by mediation type (SI vs. translation) and language modality (written vs. spoken). These findings help relate the choice of structure to the SI process and suggest that the interpreters adopted structure-based processing. The results contribute to the research on a relatively under-investigated language pair and are valuable for informing SI training.
Interpreter competences: A bibliometric analysis of scientific publications from 2003 to 2023
The aim of this study was to conduct a bibliometric analysis of research on interpreter competence to identify the concepts and theories related to interpreter competencies in the most impactful bibliographic references. To achieve this, we used the quantitative analysis models proposed by Aria and Cuccurullo (2017). Data on scientific production on the topic were collected from Scopus and Web of Science databases and filtered according to predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Finally, the ten most impactful articles identified in the bibliometric study were analyzed. The study concludes that the field of interpreter competence is still evolving, as publications show a growth rate of 10.35% in the number of publications over the past two decades. It is also noted that most authors are occasional researchers on the topic and there is a low level of international collaboration in the published research, as well as low local citation rates. Another notable point is the strong presence of China as the leading country in terms of authors who publish the most and are most cited. Based on the results and conclusions of this study, it is possible to identify gaps in the field and propose a research agenda.
Analysing collocations in articles published in coworking blogs in Portuguese: A comparative study on authentic and translated texts
This paper reports on a descriptive and comparative study that falls within corpus based translation studies (Baker, 1993, 1995, 1996, 2004). The goal was to identify and describe similarities and differences in the collocations used in articles published in coworking blogs written originally in Portuguese and in texts of the same genre written in English and translated into Portuguese. Tagnin’s (2013) taxonomy was used to inform our view of collocation. We assume that translated texts may use word combinations that do not sound natural in the target language because they are atypical in texts written originally in this language, following Mauranen’s (2007) findings. Also, this paper’s first author has worked with specialized translation for over a decade and observed that, in this context, there is a generalized expectation for texts to sound natural. We therefore argue that translators should be aware and have a good knowledge of collocations. The articles were collected from websites maintained by coworking companies, processed and analysed following corpus linguistics principles, a methodology that allows the identification of linguistic patterns. Two corpora were used: 1) a parallel corpus, with texts written originally in English and their corresponding translations into Portuguese and 2) a monolingual corpus with texts originally written in Portuguese. The corpora were stored in Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al., 2014), and the collocations were identified from n-gram lists from both corpora in Portuguese. The analyses found collocations that were frequently used in both corpora, such as trabalho flexível and espaço de trabalho, which describe professional environments and ways of working. As expected, differences were also found. One example is escritório privativo, which appears only in the translated corpus. In the authentic corpus, this concept is expressed as sala privativa. Thus, this article may be used to raise awareness, among translation students, professional translators, and professors, of the importance of looking for conventional word combinations in the target language while translating texts.
Evidential English adverbials and their French equivalents in a specialised parallel corpus
This research paper investigates the translation procedures applied to English evidential adverbials within a parallel corpus of specialized technical information in English and French aimed at popularisation. We analyse the strategies deployed by translators to ensure a natural reading in the target language, taking into consideration variation in metadiscourse functions. Corpus linguistics methods are used to analyse adverbial positioning, morphological characteristics, metadiscourse functions, and translation strategies. Our anticipated conclusions highlight the manifold functions of evidential adverbials, from enhancing meaning to conveying the author's attitude, often influenced by cultural and professional factors, resulting in variable translation strategies.
Climb, creep, and fall in Portuguese and French translations
We analyzed 128 samples containing the movement verbs climb, fall, and creep from three English novels and their professional Portuguese and French translations. In their most basic senses, climb and fall encode the path and a manner of motion, while creep conveys only the manner. In 66% of the climb contexts, the translators replaced this verb with a path verb in Portuguese and a manner-and-path verb in French. They translated fall as Portuguese cair (75%) and French tomber (50%), and all three verbs express similar information about the path and the manner. Rendering the manner in scenes with creep reached around 70% in both languages. In the translations of climb and fall with a satellite, expressing more than one trajectory, the translators kept only one in the target, corroborating the literature on the subject. In French, though, they kept the two directions in cases with dans. In addition to predictable typological effects according to L Talmy's Motion Typology, the moving figure's volition and animation seem to have influenced the translators' choices in the scenes with fall. We observed intratypological similarities and intertypological differences as expected. However, in French, the maintenance of manner was more prevalent. The French translations generally showed a greater diversity of verb types that conflated manner and path. We restrict our claims to the strategies used for translating the three chosen verbs.
International judicial cooperation: Legal terminology for translators and interpreters of English, Spanish, and Romanian
International judicial cooperation constitutes a potential field of work for translators and interpreters (with its own language, conceptual organisation, and terminology) and an area of research of interest for several reasons. However, this field is not usually addressed in the training of translators and interpreters in undergraduate and postgraduate studies. Moreover, little research has been conducted within the translation studies literature regarding international judicial cooperation. Against this background, this study is framed by the need for legal translators and interpreters to conduct documental research to specialise in international judicial cooperation, given the particularities of this field. More specifically, its main objective is to determine and define the most representative terminology considering specific texts in the context of international criminal judicial mutual recognition and its lexical combinations or collocations. It presents a methodology for both specialisation and training purposes in the Spanish-English-Romanian linguistic combination.
Literary translators' associations and the construction of translation as literature in Spain
In this article I approach literary translators’ associations in the context of late twentieth century Spain through the theoretical lens of Bourdieu’s sociology of literature. I argue that one important function of the activism that these organizations promoted was the social construction of literary translation as a form of literature in its own right. In this article I present multiple instances of how translators made use of the communicative spaces that their associations created (round tables, publications, conferences, interviews, etc.) to publicly represent translation as a kind of creation which can be largely autonomous from economic as well as scholarly considerations, and which presents three traits that are specific to literature. These traits are self-referentiality, ability to create its own object, and a structure defined by a heteronomous and an autonomous pole. This sociological approach to a largely understudied dimension of translators’ collective action invites us to revise the notion that literary translators’ associations function as professional bodies that, for the most part, fail to protect the interests of their members.
Circulations, vacuums and frictions in literary translations published in Uruguay between 1871 and 2021
This paper offers an overview of the source languages of literary translations published in Uruguay based on the data obtained in the interdisciplinary project 150 years of literary translation in printing and publishing houses in Uruguay (1871-2021). Such an overview emerges from the first phase of the project, in which we employed computational tools to process a large volume of information from the perspective of big translation history. The main source of this research is the computerised catalogue of the Biblioteca Nacional del Uruguay, whose cataloguing information was curated and supplemented with other catalogues’ information by the authors and by a group of research trainees collaborating with the project. This paper examines the ‘source language’ variable across the entire time span of the project. By analysing the relationship between some of the source languages and the publishing houses that have published translations in Uruguay, it studies the role played by different languages in the Uruguayan publishing ecosystem. By showing oscillations between the most and least frequent source languages, the panorama that we offer gives rise to a series of hypotheses about translation flows in Uruguay. These variations respond to migratory, educational, cultural, socio-political and translational phenomena, among others, which are discussed individually.
Language, representation and translation in Amazonian ethnographic writing. Peter Gow’s Of Mixed Blood / De sangre mezclada
In this article I discuss the interactions between ethnography and translation through a case study of Of Mixed Blood: Kinship and History in Peruvian Amazonia (1991) by Peter Gow. This ethnographic text has a meaningful impact on Amazonian anthropological theory and displays high linguistic reflexivity. De sangre mezclada. Parentesco e historia en la Amazonía peruana, a Spanish translation by anthropologists Sebastián Arze and Juan Manuel Rivera Acosta, was published in 2020, aiming to return the knowledge produced by the Scottish anthropologist to the local context. A two-step contrastive analysis is applied. First, the source text was examined to identify the roles of translation in ethnographic production, focusing on both analytical and representational functions. Next, selected segments from the source text were compared with their equivalents in the target text to assess the translation’s impact on these functions. The findings highlight three key translation challenges: the transfer of native categories, specifically racial categories; representing the ethnographer's translation methods; and employing contemporary terminology when describing local people and institutions.
Annotated translation of Graciliano Ramos' short story "Baleia" into English
The aim of this study was to present an annotated translation of the short story "Baleia", by Graciliano Ramos, into English. To this end, the annotated translation is guided by the description and discussion of the choices made to deal with elements of the Northeastern hinterland described in the work, which demarcates the Caatinga biome, exclusive to Brazilian territory. The theoretical basis is built on research by Torres (2017), on annotated translation; Berman (2013), exploring the systematics of deformation; Venuti (2019, 2021), on domestication and foreignization; Daghoughi and Hashemian (2016) and Franco Aixelá (2013), in reflections on cultural-specific items and cultural markers; and Gambier (2010), on translation strategies, among other researchers in Translation studies. The translation process described in the comments also draws on studies from other areas of knowledge, denoting the multidisciplinary interface of Translation studies, evidenced in this study by research related to the field of Biology, specifically Botany, Zoology and Phylogenetic Systematics to locate genera and species mentioned in the narrative and understand the distribution and translation possibilities of these elements through the relationship between vernacular name and scientific name. The reflection on the choices presented in the translation commentary makes explicit and theorizes the decisions made and the deliberate choice to conserve, where possible, the elements of the biome in order to finally present the translated short story.
Miguel de Unamuno in Hungary: Translators, translations and retranslations
On the occasion of the 160th anniversary of the birth of Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936), this article aims to present the Hungarian reception of the work of the most prominent figure of the generation of '98. The study focuses, in particular, on translations and the question of retranslation, regarding the two Hungarian versions, on the one hand of Nothing Less Than a Real Man – the first from 1923 and the second from 1999 – and, on the other, of the novel Fog whose first Spanish edition (1914) turns 110 years old in 2024. The first Hungarian version of Unamuno's most famous nivola was born in 1924, from the pen of Viktor Garády (Vittorio de Gauss), while the second was published in 2021, thanks to the work of translator Nelli Litvai. The two Hungarian texts – and almost an entire century that has passed between them – give us the opportunity to also reflect on the causes and motives of the retranslation.
Diglossia in (re)translation in Francophone literatures: The case of Jacques Roumain's Gouverneurs de la rosée in Brazil
Writers from former French colonies may face a dilemma: which language to write in? The choice between the language of the coloniser (French) and the mother tongue has poetic, editorial and political consequences that cannot be ignored. Gouverneurs de la rosée (1944), a novel by the Haitian Jacques Roumain, offers a solution: he uses French without abandoning Creole. To do so, he stages a narrative translation device in which the characters consciously communicate in Creole, but the narrator reports and translates their speeches into a French “perfumed” (Depestre, 2006) by Creole. In this way, he appropriates the language of the former coloniser and transforms it in the face of Haitian cultural dynamics, disarming colonial diglossia. Based on this observation, and drawing on the work of Hoffmann (1976, 2003), Laroche (1981), Constantini (2003, 2005), Chaulet-Achour (2010), and Mattos and Provinzano Amaral (2023), we analyse the Brazilian translation (Donos do orvalho, 1954, by Emmo Duarte) and retranslation (Senhores do orvalho, 2020, by Monica Stahel) of the novel in order to understand how each translation project retextualises the diglossic conflict present in Roumain’s work and, we could say, in a large part of so-called Francophone literature. The paradigm of translation proves to be a promising way of reading and analysing post-colonial francophone poetics, as well as the translation poetics developed in Brazil to present to Brazilian public the diglossic conflict in which French becomes “war booty”, as Kateb Yacine used to say, and is devoured by the francophone writer.
Transcreating the moon in a concrete light: A translation proposal for “!/o(rounD)moon,how”, by E. E. Cummings
This article will present two translation proposals for “!/o(rounD)moon,how” by E. E. Cummings (1894-1962). Included in the book 95 Poems (1958), the poem is no less experimental than the other components of the work, with the author's manipulation of language and use of white space on the page being indispensable aspects to be recovered in translations of the title. Taking into account the theories of the Campos brothers and Pignatari, who promote a translational project linked to creation and critical exercise, as well as the translations of the younger Paulista poet, Augusto de Campos, of Cummings' work, the objective is to transcreate the miniature above mentioned to English, recovering some meanings from it and proposing others, as far it is authorized within the poem. Establishing a connection with Literary Theory, the sense effects constructed in these transcreations will be closely analyzed. The analytical procedure should highlight features of the Cummingsian work condensed in “!/o(rounD)moon,how”, offering research in the area of translation of a version of a poem not yet rendered into Brazilian Portuguese.
The poetry of Giovanni Giudici and Laura Accerboni translated into Portuguese
This paper aims to present and comment on the Portuguese winner translation of the poems “Gli abiti e i corpi” by the Italian poet Giovanni Giudici and “Cnidaria” by the Italian-Swiss poet Laura Acceboni. The translations presented here were carried out in 2024 in the context of the first edition of the International Poetry Translation Prize from Italian to Portuguese M’illumino d’immenso, promoted by the Italian Institute of Culture of Rio de Janeiro and the Laboratorio Traduxit, with sponsorship from Biblioteche di Roma. This competition was created with the aim of promoting the translation and dissemination of Italian poetry in Portuguese-speaking countries and its winner was the Brazilian translator Mariangela Ragassi, who shares some of her impressions on the process of translating these poems.