The Translation of Ultime Lettere di Jacopo Ortis [The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis], by Ugo Foscolo, to the Portuguese

Abstract

This article discusses aspects of the Brazilian translation of the epistolary novel Ultime Lettere di Jacopo Ortis [The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis] by Ugo Foscolo (1778-1827), published (in its definitive form) in Italy in 1817 but in Brazil only in 2015, translated by Andréia Guerini e Karine Simoni. Commentary on the translation focused on aspects of the author’s prose style, such as punctuation, repetition and rhythm. The first part of the article involves a brief explanation of the work, which is followed by analysis of the translation choices and their inherent challenges, since this work is from a time and place far removed from the current Brazilian context. In such cases, translator’s notes are a very useful way for translators to explain their decision-making process, recasting them as active historical subjects (Berman, 1995; PYM, 1998; Venuti, 2002) in search of possible solutions for the linguistic and cultural differences between the translated text and the source text. If, in the end, each translation is one among many other possible versions that could have been made, translator’s notes are also fundamental for freedom from a fragmented and incomplete perspective that disregards external aspects of a work when attempting to understand the translation phenomenon.