Dickens em transmutação: A tradução da simbologia dos espíritos em Um Conto de Natal para o cinema.

Abstract

The book A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (1843) has been significantly translated into the audiovisual system. We assume that the great success of this work is due to the fact that it approaches the universal themes of generosity and redemption. The miser Scrooge (protagonist), on a Christmas Eve, has the chance to think about his behavior after the visit of three spirits: the Christmas Past, the Christmas Present and the Christmas Yet to Come. Dickens creates a symbolic relationship between the spirits and time, in order to show that the Christmas Spirit must be a constant feeling (past, present, future) in people’s lives. Our objective is to analyse the strategies used by Edwin L. Marin (1938) to translate this symbology of the spirits in the book to the film. This analysis has led us to observe that the symbolic representation of the texts is established in a different way due to the peculiarities of the literary and cinematic systems as well as to the individual choices of writer and translator. We see the construction of the symbology in each text as a continuous process of semiosis motivated not only by the characteristics of each media, but also by the historic context. Keywords: audiovisual translation, literature, symbology, intersemiotic translation.