As traduções de A Toy Princess para o português brasileiro: um conto de fadas às avessas

Abstract

This undergraduate thesis for the conclusion of the Bachelor’s Degree Course in English Translation from and into Portuguese of the Federal University of Juiz de Fora is based on the 19th century work A Toy Princess, by Mary De Morgan, and its two existent translations. The translations are contemporary (both from 2022). The first one was written by the translator Suzana Ventura, and the second one by two undergraduates from the aforementioned course, Déa Araujo and Tatiana Mageste. This research aims to conduct a comparative analysis of the translations. Its specific objectives are: i) to analyze the protagonism of the three main female characters in the story; ii) to evaluate translations choices face to Itamar Even-Zohar’s Polysystem Theory, considering the post-true era and the feminist movement; iii) and to verify the potential connections with André Lefevere’s concepts of rewriting, manipulation and patronage established in the two translations. In this way, it aims to detect similarities and differences between the two texts inserted in the same target polysystem, but probably guided by different purposes. The theoretical framework includes Polysystem Theory (Even-Zohar, [1990], 2013), concepts of rewriting, manipulation and patronage (Lefevere, 1992), and perspectives on feminism (Franchini, 2017; Garcia, 2011; Mittanck e Gevehr, 2021; Narvaz e Koller, 2006; Souza e Dias, 2013; Zirbel, 2021) and post-truth (Guerra e Barbosa, 2019; Medeiros, 2017). To do so, we applied two research analysis methods: quantitative and qualitative (Creswell, 2007). The first one was used to investigate the terms referring to the three main female characters in the story with the support of Corpus Linguistics tools (Sardinha, 2000; Tagnin, 2002) through the AntConc software (Anthony, 2020). The second one was used to identify, face to Polysystem Theory, the occurrence of translation trends listed by Baker (1996) in the two texts. For this latter analysis, we selected 14 excerpts from each text (the original and translations). As a result, from a quantitative point of view, the research highlights the greater prominence of the princess, followed by the fairy as the second main female character, and the court ladies in third position, and shows the fairy as the most agentive character in the story. Regarding qualitative analysis, it is observed that the first translation seems heavily influenced by the feminist framework that underpins the original work, even amplifying it, while the second translation adheres more closely to the academic purpose, resulting in a more literal translation (Aubert, 1998; Barbosa, 1990; Berman, 20017). However, the central conflict that guides the plot, named the distortion of reality, is maintained in both translations.