O método de Isabel Burton na primeira tradução de um romance brasileiro para a língua inglesa - Iraçéma, the honey-lips, de José de Alencar

Abstract

Published in 1886, the English version of José de Alencar’s Iracema became the first translation of a Brazilian novel into that language. Besides its pioneering character, Iracema’s translation raises the question of the Indianist genre’s role in the primary reception of Brazilian literature in the United Kingdom and the establishing of an exotic tradition of representing Brazilian culture abroad. In order to contribute to a better understanding of these issues, such as the translation authorship itself, questioned by some scholars, this article presents an investigation of the translation method used in the English version of Alencar’s book. Through a comparative analysis between the original and the translated text, this research focus in the surveying of the methods employed in the translation of the specific cultural items found in the text, according to the classification proposed by Javier Aixelá (2013), especially those ones related to Indianist culture, which abound in the text and are regarded as an important feature of the literary genre here concerned. The article shows how the prevalence of certain transfer procedures and the way they were used suggest a method that indicates the exoticization of the translated text which has created a resistance in its reception to a new audience.