A tradução pela pedra ou a metapoética do traduzir em João Cabral de Melo Neto

Abstract

This paper analyses two English translations of João Cabral de Melo Neto’s poem entitled A educação pela pedra (Education by stone), carried out by the translators Richard Zenith (MELO NETO, 2005) and Elide Valarine Oliver (OLIVER, 2001). This study has the following aims: first, to pinpoint the procedures, strategies and literary devices particularly involved in the target language-culture poems on the basis of the metapoetics of translating; second, to investigate possible cultural and ideological implications involved in the translation process of the poem A educação pela pedra and the reception of their translations in other cultures and languages, in this case, in the English-speaking countries. This paper is based on the interdisciplinary interface between the fields of Literary Theory and Translation Studies. For this reason, critical and methodological contributions from these two fields will be provided in order to examine our object of study. As a consequence, the reader is supposed to follow these investigative steps: a) brief presentation of extratextual data relevant to the understanding of the author, the background and the translation of his work; b) close reading of the poem A educação pela pedra indicating what is most essential to us in the source poem c) brief literature review concerning the theory and criticism of poetry translation d) close reading of the two translations to the English language and the anglophone culture e) lastly, a brief synthesis and conclusion.