A Tradução de cantos sagrados em contexto de revitalização linguística: o caso do Toré Potiguara

Abstract

This paper presents some problems and issues of translation in the context of linguistic revitalization of the Potiguara indigenous people, a population of approximately 20,000 people distributed across three indigenous lands and main urban areas on the northern coast of Paraíba (Brazil). Since 2000, the Potiguara people have been relearning and reinventing their ancestral language through indigenous schools, virtual study groups, and individual and collective artistic and academic productions, using mainly written sources from the 16th and 17th centuries. The translation of traditional sacred Toré chants into the language of their own ancestors is part of a larger process of cultural and linguistic revival, which subverts the monolingualism imposed by colonization, following the opposite path of translations into indigenous languages ​​carried out in the context of contact and catechesis. The analysis of translation in the context of indigenous protagonism shows that issues such as authorship and identity will not always be in accordance with the Western model, requiring new categorizations and the opening of academia to new decolonial ways of translating.