The utopia of the translation within Austerlitz: one work between three languages

Abstract

This paper discusses the relationship between verbal and visual systems in the work Austerlitz of W. G. Sebald (1944-2001) and considers the comparison between the German version and the translations from Portugal and Brazil, analyzing the shifts of meaning that arise when, in translation, the arrangement of the photographs within the text is changed. The analytical comparison of three passages from the work shows that in a translation that involves different systems of signs, certain changes in the plastic disposition reflect differences in symbolic and conceptual changes. By Mieke Bal’s mode, space interaction between the legible and visible is understood as the space of intersection, and deployment of supplementarity senses. So there is at Austerlitz a relationship between self image and text, but of mutual interdependence in which the semio-aesthetics vitality of the work finds support. On the one side the analyzes aim to elucidate the discursive richness that lurks in the image-interface text within the work of Sebald, and on the other, also reveal how complex and utopian is the translation when it is confronted not only with the distances between the verbal language, but also between the verbal and visual languages.