Marie Octavie Coudreau, French Explorer on the Trombetas River

Abstract

This article presents notes and comments on the translation of chapters VI, VIII and IX of "Viagem ao (rio) Trombetas” (Voyage au Trombetas) from the homonymous work by Henri A. Coudreau, including the last chapter written by Marie Octavie Coudreau, published in 1900. The source version chosen for this translation is available in the library of old books provided by Google Books and it is based in a version digitized by Harvard University. We commented on the choices made in the translation process from Old French into Brazilian Portuguese, considering the particularities of the text, the change of discourse when the authorship changes, the geographical, social and political context of the time and other relevant aspects. The context of Brazil's border with French Guiana at that time is important, as is the localization of the Portuguese words made by the authors in the source text. That is the reason why we used the concept of back-translation (retroconversion) as a starting point for the translation, i.e. going in the opposite direction in order to understand the authors’ writing (and in this case, translation) choices, especially regarding toponyms.