Tradução de um artigo da Constituição Federal para a língua Maxakali: limitações e desafios do processo de tradução para uma língua indígena

Abstract

This article aims at describing a translating experience undergone by the authors of the Article 231 of the Brazilian Federal Constitution into Maxakali, a Brazilian indigenous language spoken in Northeast of the state of Minas Gerais. The translation was performed within the scope of the Intercultural Graduation Course for Indigenous Educators of the Faculty of Education in the Federal University of Minas Gerais. The experience took place in one of the classes in the Maxakali village of Pradinho in 2019. The intention of carrying out this translation came from the interest of the students during one of the course meetings to understand the function of this Constitution’s article. The main goals of the translation were to make the Maxakali students aware of the article 231 and to enable its reading in Maxakali language, as a strategy to strengthen this language in relation to the majority language (Portuguese) through a wider offer of texts of different written genres in the language. The characteristics of the legal text and the reality to which it refers is strange and distant from the Maxakali reality. This imposes cultural and lexical challenges to the translation. These limitations required non-literal adaptation to the text and deletion of paragraphs that complement the article in the original version. This article reports difficulties that were found in the translation process and presents challenges for a future translation of the same article. Additionally, the reflections presented here may be useful for overall translation activities from majority languages towards minority languages and for research on translation related to strengthening policies on minorized languages.