Translating Non-Standard Caribbean English into Portuguese: case study of V. S. Naipaul's "Love, Love, Love Alone"

Abstract

The translator incorporates the process of translation and, consequently, the mediation between languages and systems of culture. This mediation implies the interface of distinct dimensions such as the communicative or the semiotic. The translator is, at the same time, a reader of the source text and the producer of the target text. Bearing this in mind, this paper’s intention is to analyse the short-story “Love, Love, Love Alone”, by V. S. Naipaul, as the characters’ speech is mainly non-standard Caribbean English. Socio-cultural restricted elements such as this are a problem to translation due to expectancy norms in the target culture.