Tradução e negritude: análise de paratextos nas traduções de Home e Sula de Toni Morrison

Abstract

This work aims to analyze how the elements related to blackness, which are characteristics in the works of the African-American writer Toni Morrison, are presented in the Brazilian cultural context through translation. In this sense, we propose an analysis of the paratexts of two of her most recent novels translated into our country – Voltar para casa (2016), translation of Home (2012) and translated by José Rubens Siqueira, and Sula (2021), which was first published in the United States in 1973 and was translated to Portuguese by Débora Landsberg. Starting from the assumption that the images of an author are created through translation processes and that these relations are linked to power relations (LEFEVERE, 1992), this research is based on the Descriptive Translation Studies (EVEN-ZOHAR, 1990; TOURY, 1995; LEFEREVE, 1992), the Postcolonial Translation Studies (TYMCZKO, 1999) as well as the analysis of paratexts (GENETTE, 2009; CARNEIRO, 2015; TORRES, 2011). Furthermore, it is imperative to reflect about the relationship between contemporary Brazilian black literature and translated Afro-diasporic literature. It is equally important a brief historiographic course on black resistance in Brazil and a reflection on the impacts of structural racism present in our Society until today, which is often masked by the myth of racial democracy. Regarding the results, aspects related to issues of race and blackness, so characteristic of Morrison’s work in its original context, tend to be erased and sometimes silenced when her novels are translated into the Brazilian cultural context.