Adapting to the Times: Adaptation as a Form of Translation in Different Periods in Brazil

Year 2011, Issue: 33, 21 - 42, 01.06.2011

John Milton

Abstract

This article will attempt to show that adaptation is a central part of the publication of translated works, and will examine translations from a number of different periods in Brazil to show a number of the factors that help define the criteria behind adapting a work. I shall begin with the Jesuit priest, Padre José de Anchieta 1534-1597 , who adapted the plays of the Portuguese religious dramatist, Gil Vicente 1465?-1536? , into Tupi, an Indian language of the south-eastern coast of Brazil. In the translations he introduced certain religious terms directly from Portuguese into Tupi, while the moral of the plays was directed towards eliminating the “sinful” habits of the Brazilian Indians. Three centuries later Tomás de Gonzaga, a prominent member of the Minas Conspiracy Inconfidência Mineira of 1789, whose aim was to overthrow the Portuguese colonial government and found an independent state, was only able to publish a critique of the hated Portuguese Governor, Luís Cunha de Menezes, by adapting his original poem – changing the references, and pretending that he had not written it – in other words, by making it into a pseudo-translation. Monteiro Lobato, publisher, pamphleteer and author of children’s works, was a bête noire of the Getúlio Vargas military government. In order to introduce critiques of the Vargas government into certain of his translations of children’s works, he devised a technique of retelling, thus making it possible for him to insert certain critiques of the Vargas government into the narrative. Lobato turned J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan a work which one seldom associates with political censorship into a work with political overtones which was seized by the São Paulo state police.

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