{"id":557334,"date":"2025-07-17T11:15:15","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T14:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=557334"},"modified":"2025-07-17T11:15:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T14:15:15","slug":"translators-and-interpreters-take-center-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/translators-and-interpreters-take-center-stage\/","title":{"rendered":"Translators and interpreters take center stage"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Archive of the National Indigenous Peoples Museum<\/span>From left: Jo\u00e3o Carvalho and Darcy Ribeiro talk to a Kaapor girl in 1951Archive of the National Indigenous Peoples Museum<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

When he was commissioned in 1947 by the Indian Protection Service (SPI), as it was then known, for two expeditions to the Kaapor reservations on the border of Par\u00e1 and Maranh\u00e3o States, anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro (1922\u20131997) realized that although he knew a little of their language, he would need an interpreter to better understand aspects such as ancestry and rituals. It was specialist Indigenous interpreter Jo\u00e3o Carvalho who assisted with the task. \u201cJo\u00e3o is our interpreter, and his role is equally important during both social and working receptions, so he has to talk a lot to make up for my silence,\u201d wrote Ribeiro in his accounts of the expedition collated into Di\u00e1rios \u00edndios: Os Urubu-Kaapor <\/em>(Indian diaries: The Urubu-Kapoor) (Companhia das Letras, 1996).<\/p>\n

Their partnership is recorded in the book Fotografias de int\u00e9rpretes: Em busca das vidas perdidas<\/em> (Photographs of Interpreters: In Search of Lost Lives<\/em>), by British translator John Milton, a professor at the School of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Humanities at the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (FFLCH-USP). Published in Brazil by Lexikos in 2022, the English version of this collection was released at the end of 2024 by the UK\u2019s Cambridge Scholars Publishing. In the work, the researcher brings together stories from interpreters around the world, for example Viktor Sukhodrev (1932\u20132014), who worked in Soviet diplomacy during the Cold War (1947\u20131991). According to the book, US president Richard Nixon (1913\u20131994) trusted Sukhodrev more than his own team, given that the interpreter was distanced from White House power struggles.<\/p>\n

One chapter is dedicated to Indigenous interpreters in Brazil, such as Megaron Txucarram\u00e3e, translator and interpreter for her uncle Raoni Metuktire, chief of the Caiap\u00f3 people and one of the country\u2019s foremost Indigenous leaders. Megaron, who directed the Xingu Indigenous Park from 1985 to 1989, does not do literal translations\u2014she includes explanations and adds remarks. \u201cAs an Indigenous leader herself, her presence is not just semantic in value, but also symbolic,\u201d says Milton.<\/p>\n

Interpreters work with oral language in an instantaneous, simultaneous manner at events of all kinds, from scientific conferences to political meetings. \u201cGenerally speaking, translators have more time to edit and reflect upon a certain piece of written material. But the role of both is to be a bridge between different cultures,\u201d explains Milton. \u201cIn literary terms, much is said about writers, but little attention is paid to the work of translators. I think it\u2019s important to bring these careers out from the sidelines, as they can help to throw light on aspects of history and literary work, for example.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Bob Burchette\u2009\/\u2009The Washington Post via Getty Images<\/span>Sukhodrev between Soviet leader Leonid Brejnev (left<\/em>) and US President Richard Nixon in the 1970sBob Burchette\u2009\/\u2009The Washington Post via Getty Images<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Commenced in 2017, the collection Palavra do tradutor<\/em><\/a> (Translator\u2019s word) has this aim. \u201cOur idea is to disseminate the work of translators active in Brazil and overseas linguists who translate Brazilian literature,\u201d says Dirce Waltrick do Amarante, of the Translation Studies Graduate Course at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), who is heading up the initiative alongside other professors from the same institution. The project has now published eleven books, featuring interviews with and biographical data of translators across a range of genres such as fiction, poetry, and theater. The first two volumes were published by Medusa in 2018. One is dedicated to Aurora Fornoni Bernardini, of the USP Oriental Letters Department, known for her translations from Italian and Russian into Portuguese. The other features Donaldo Sch\u00fcler, a retired language and Greek literature professor from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). All these works can be downloaded free of charge on the UFSC website.<\/p>\n

According to translator Luciana Carvalho Fonseca, a professor at the FFLCH-USP Modern Letters Department, contemporaneous translation theory studies were largely based on the notion of equivalence, one of whose exponents in the 1960s being US linguist Eugene A. Nida (1914\u20132011), who applied it to his translation of the Bible. \u201cIn this concept, the task of translation is seen as the transposition of text in one language to another, with much reverence for the original work,\u201d says the researcher. Other proposals emerged over time, adds Fonseca, for example functionalism, which allows adaptations\u2014cuts, insertions, footnotes, and introductory texts. There is also the paradigm of descriptive translation studies, which conceive the translated text based on aspects such as the sociohistorical background, the reception, circulation, and personality of translators.<\/p>\n

Translators and interpreters intermediate different cultures<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In recent years, Fonseca has been poring over the career of Maria Velluti (1827\u20131891), a Portuguese-born translator, actress, and director, who migrated to Brazil in 1847. The story began after an informal conversation between Fonseca and researcher Dennys Silva-Reis, of the Federal University of Acre (UFAC), on the erasure of women from Brazilian translation history. The pair came up with almost sixty translators\u2019 names from the digital periodicals section of the Brazilian National Library in Rio de Janeiro, and wrote the article \u201cNineteenth century women translators in Brazil: From the novel to historiographical narrative\u201d (2018). Velluti was among these names. \u201cShe was often cited by journals, translating more than 40 works, and introduced the French realism theater to Brazilian companies of the period. This caught my attention, and I wanted to find out more about her career,\u201d says Fonseca. During her work, the researcher found critiques in the press of the time, some written by Machado de Assis (1839\u20131908), with praise for Velluti\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the biggest challenges for those researching this field is finding archives and collections documenting the contributions made by these professionals, from behind the scenes at publishing houses to correspondence and manuscripts,\u201d says Bruno Gomide, professor of Russian culture and literature at USP, who coordinates a FAPESP-funded research project looking into the translators of Russian texts in Brazil. One line of this work looks at the output and life of Boris Schnaiderman (1917\u20132016), born in Ukraine; Tatiana Belinky (1919\u20132013) and Valeri Perel\u00e9chin (1913\u20131992), both from Russia; and Hungarian Paulo R\u00f3nai (1907\u20131992). \u201cAll of them made their home in Brazil. Belinky and Schnaiderman both arrived during their childhood in the 1920s, while R\u00f3nai and Perel\u00e9chin came later: in the 1940s and 1950s respectively,\u201d says the researcher, who organized the seminar Translators\u2019 Stories, held at USP\u2019s Centro MariAntonia in the S\u00e3o Paulo State capital in August 2024.<\/p>\n

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Victor Moriyama\u2009\/\u2009Folhapress | L\u00e9o Ramos Chaves\u2009\/\u2009Revista Pesquisa FAPESP<\/span>Tatiana Belinky and Boris Schnaiderman translated works by Russian authors into PortugueseVictor Moriyama\u2009\/\u2009Folhapress | L\u00e9o Ramos Chaves\u2009\/\u2009Revista Pesquisa FAPESP<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

At the event, Gomide talked about Schnaiderman, famous for the rigor with which he translated short stories, novels, and poems directly from Russian to Portuguese, starting in the 1940s (see <\/em>Pesquisa FAPESP issue n\u00ba<\/em>\u00a0236<\/em><\/a>). \u201cHe was one of the first to have a continuous, systematic, and professional career in Russian literary translation not just in Brazil, but in Latin America as a whole,\u201d says the researcher. He also shone on the institutional stage, contributing to formulation of the Russian language course at USP in 1961. \u201cSchnaiderman translated not only literary classics to Portuguese, but also works by Russian theorists with innovative proposals across a range of areas, for example linguist Mikhail Bakhtin [1895\u20131975],\u201d says Walter Carlos Costa, of UFSC and the Graduate Program in Translation Studies at the Federal University of Cear\u00e1 (UFC). \u201cHe also had significant contact with Brazilian writers: he exchanged correspondence with Dalton Trevisan [1925\u20132024] and was a friend of Rubem Fonseca [1925\u20132020],\u201d adds the researcher, who is currently exploring Schnaiderman\u2019s contributions to the Literary Supplement of newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo<\/em>.<\/p>\n

R\u00f3nai was persecuted by the Nazis and spent six months in a forced labor camp in Hungary during the Second World War, before moving to Brazil in 1941 at the invitation of the Get\u00falio Vargas (1882\u20131954) government. \u201cHe began studying Portuguese solo in 1937, and around two years later published Mensagem do Brasil <\/em>(Message from Brazil), an anthology of Brazilian poems translated into Hungarian, with a preface by the Brazilian ambassador in Hungary,\u201d says independent researcher Zsuzsanna Spiry, who defended her doctoral thesis on the intellectual at FFLCH-USP in 2016. \u201cR\u00f3nai arrived in Brazil in March 1941, and in June of the same year he gave a talk at the Brazilian Academy of Letters.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the researcher, the translator participated actively in Brazilian intellectual life. \u201cAmong other output, he wrote literary critique articles for key newspapers in the country and worked as an editor, including on books by Guimar\u00e3es Rosa [1908\u20131967], with whom he was very close,\u201d says Spiry, coordinator of the book Rosa & R\u00f3nai: O universo de Guimar\u00e3es por Paulo R\u00f3nai, seu maior decifrador <\/em>(Rosa & R\u00f3nai: The world of Guimar\u00e3es by Paulo R\u00f3nai, his greatest decoder (Bazar do Tempo, 2020), jointly with journalist and editor Ana Cecilia Impellizieri Martins. One of R\u00f3nai\u2019s most meaningful works was the arrangement of Mar de hist\u00f3rias: Antologia do conto mundial<\/em> (Sea of histories: Anthology of the worldwide tale) (Editora Nova Fronteira), with philologist Aur\u00e9lio Buarque de Holanda (1910\u20131989). Some of the texts in this ten-volume compendium, commencing in 1945 and concluding in 1990, were translated by the pair. \u201cR\u00f3nai did not only master Russian, but a further eight languages including Latin, French, and German,\u201d says Spiry.<\/p>\n

Spiry sees another noteworthy part of Ronai\u2019s canon in the essays and reflections on translation practice, collated under titles such as Escola de tradutores <\/em>(School of translators) (Ministry of Education and Health Documentation Service, 1952) and Tradu\u00e7\u00e3o vivida<\/em> (Translation lived) (Editora Nova Fronteira, 1974). Amarante, of UFSC, agrees. \u201cA lot of his texts anticipated debates on core aspects of translation theories in modern times, such as foreignization and machine translation [using computer programs],\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

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Fernando Rabelo\u2009\/\u2009Folhapress<\/span>Hungarian translator Paulo R\u00f3nai arrived in Brazil in the 1940sFernando Rabelo\u2009\/\u2009Folhapress<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Belinky became known as an author of children\u2019s books and for her adaptation of Monteiro Lobato\u2019s O s\u00edtio do pica-pau amarelo <\/em>(The Yellow Woodpecker Farm<\/em>) for the TV Tupi series broadcast between 1952 and 1963. \u201cBut she also translated a number of Russian literature books into Portuguese, including works for children and by classical and contemporary authors for adults,\u201d says Cecilia Rosas, a member of the research group Ex\u00edlio e Tradu\u00e7\u00e3o (Exile and Translation), coordinated by Gomide at USP. This is the case of No degrau de ouro <\/em>(On the Golden Porch<\/em>) (1987), by Tatiana Tolst\u00e1ia, published in Brazil in 1990 by Companhia das Letras, and reprinted last year by Editora 34.<\/p>\n

Of the four, Perel\u00e9chin is the lesser-known name among the Brazilian public. A translator, poet, and critic, he lived for four decades in Brazil. \u201cHe was fluent in English, Mandarin, and Portuguese,\u201d says Gomide. With a turbulent life history, Perel\u00e9chin wrote homoerotic poetry, but also made anti-Semitic comments and praised the military dictatorship in Brazil (1964\u20131985). He died poor and blind in Retiro dos Artistas (Artists\u2019 Retreat), Rio de Janeiro.<\/p>\n

According to Gomide, one of the research aims is to find converging points in the careers of the four translators. Between the 1960s and 1980s, for example, R\u00f3nai and Schnaiderman exchanged correspondence and shared observations on translation work. Additionally, the former sat on Schnaiderman\u2019s habilitation thesis panel in 1974 at USP, published in 1982 by Perspectiva under the title Dostoi\u00e9vski: Prosa e poesia<\/em>. (Dostoevsky: Prose and poetry). \u201cOver the course of their lives, they agreed and disagreed at different moments,\u201d concludes Gomide.<\/p>\n

The story above was published with the title “Lives translated<\/strong>” in issue 347 of january\/2025.<\/p>\n

Project<\/strong>
\nExile and translation in Brazil:<\/em> Russian texts<\/em> (n\u00ba 22\/05910-4<\/a>); Grant Mechanism<\/strong> Regular Research Grant; Principal Investigator <\/strong>Bruno Barretto Gomide (USP); Investment<\/strong> R$355,408.64.<\/p>\n

Scientific articles
\n<\/strong>FONSECA, L. C. & SILVA-REIS, D. Maria Velluti’s theater translations in nineteenth-century Brazil: A mise-en-sc\u00e8ne<\/a>. Revista da Associa\u00e7\u00e3o Brasileira de Literatura Comparada<\/strong>. no. 34, pp. 23\u201346. 2018.
\n<\/strong>FONSECA, L. C. Mulheres de imagina\u00e7\u00e3o ardente e leitores terr\u00edveis: Maria Velluti, uma traductora do s\u00e9culo XIX. Boletim 3×22<\/strong>. pp. 108\u201317. 2021.
\n<\/strong>GOMIDE, B. B. Le texte litt\u00e9raire russe et l\u2019\u00e9migration: Les trajectoires parall\u00e8les de Schostakovsky et Schnaiderman<\/a>. <\/u>Br\u00e9sil (s) \u2013 Sciences Humaines et Sociales<\/strong>. Vol. 22, pp. 1\u201320. 2022.<\/p>\n

Book<\/strong>
\nMILTON, J. Fotografias de int\u00e9rpretes: Em busca das vidas perdidas<\/strong>. S\u00e3o Paulo: Lexikos Editora, 2022.<\/p>\n

Book chapter<\/strong>
\nGOMIDE, B. B. Translation Russian literature in Brazil: Politics, emigration, university and journalism (1930\u20131974)<\/a>. In: MAGUIRE, M. & McATEER, C. Translating Russian literature in the global context<\/strong>. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Open Book Publishers, 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The work of these professionals can help shed light on history and literature","protected":false},"author":774,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[],"coauthors":[5325],"class_list":["post-557334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanities"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/774"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557334"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":557351,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557334\/revisions\/557351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557334"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=557334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}