The Obscene Madame D: uma análise da tradução da obra para o inglês sob a luz dos estudos descritivos da tradução

Abstract

Hilda Hilst‘s A Obscena Senhora D, first published in 1982, was translated into French in 1997 and into English in 2012. The Obscene Madame D was carried out by Nathanaël and Rachel Gontijo Araújo and was published by Nightboat Books, New York, and A Bolha, Rio de Janeiro. This narrative is focused on Hillé‘s stream of consciousness and presents questions about life, death, body, soul, sex, religion and social environment. It takes place inside her house, and the protagonist dialogues with her dead husband Ehud. Moreover it presents peculiar idiosyncratic elements: lack of paragraphs, dashes and periods, in other words Hilst‘s style. In this way, this translation is challenging and gave rise to some questions: a) Is the translation characterized as such through its paratextual elements?; b) Could the translation keep the protagonist‘s stream of consciousness rhythm?; c) Did the translation translate the exotic features owned to source-language or did it maintain a closer relation to target literature? The main hypothesis is that the translation brought the hilstian style closer to English language and the translators were consistent through the translation process. This research proposes to describe and analize The Obscene Madame D by use of the descriptive scheme proposed by Lambert and Van Gorp (1985).