A paisagem indizível em duas traduções brasileiras de heart of darkness: uma análise de estilo com base em corpus

Abstract

Studies in style of translation (BAKER, 2000) have revealed important aspects of mediation in translation (associated, according to MALMKJAER 2004, with the mediators interpretation, the purpose of the original, of the translated text and the translation audience), including the translators individuality. In this context, Munday (2008) suggests that the authors voice may be fragmented when there are several translators of a single author, understanding style as the textual expression of voice. This study aims to investigate this hypothesis in different translations of a single literary text, Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness (1902), using Mundays model for the analysis of translation shifts based on narrative point of view. The study is also motivated by the suggestion that corpus tools may complement literary analyses (STUBBS, 2005) and proposes an interface between these two areas by taking a literary essay as a starting point (McCLINTOCK, 1984). The corpus is comprised of the English source-text and two Brazilian translations. The texts are part of ESTRA, a corpus compiled to contribute to studies in style of translation of literary texts. Drawing on McClintocks analysis, this study proposes to examine the representation of landscape in the translations as an avenue into their style. Epitomized by the word unspeakable, this representation is realized linguistically by means of negation (cf. McCLINTOCK 1985, STUBBS 2005), among other features. Negative words and affixes were therefore used as search words for the generation of concordance lines in the source-text using software WordSmith Tools© 6.0 (SCOTT, 2012). The lines were selected according to the theme of landscape, expanded to the level of the sentence and aligned for analysis using the online solution YouAlign. The methodology follows the descriptive stage of Malmkjaers approach (2003, 2004) using Mundays model (2008), complemented by Appraisal Theory (MARTIN; WHITE, 2005). The findings show changes in the four planes of point of view, although those most relevant to the theme of unspeakability are found in the psychological and ideological planes, construing different representations of the landscape. A distinctive feature of intensified graduation is also observed in one translation which may be the result of the translators conscious strategy. Opposing tendencies pointing to sanitization and intensification of negative semantic prosody are found in the other translation.