Analysis One
27 Setembro 2017, 14:00 • David Alan Prescott
Analysis of text #1 from the anthology. How the language used reflects the personality of a character in a novel and how we must try to be true to that character when translating. In this case it is a little boy from a socially underprivileged racial minority in an American city. How would the equivalent "person" talk in a Portuguese translation? Is there an equivalent "person" in Portugal? And are we equipped with the knowledge or skill to translate this?
Other matters involved translating of features of any US town, such as a candy store into an equivalent feature in a Portuguese town, where little children buy their fruit gums in different places to where American kids spend their pocket money.
How far should we go in "adapting" the translation to a different reality? Particularly considering that an American readership would read this novel with no problems at all of understanding, should a Portuguese reader encounter cultural barriers when reading the Portuguese translation.
One should also consider that the "Harry Potter" novels. among others, have American editions in which vocabulary that would be a problem for an American child to understand, such as "crumpet", is changed into "muffin", to use just one example.