In this article, we resort, above all, to the theoretical formulations of Antoine Berman (2007) in order to analyze the translations of Virgil’s Georgics IV, 453-527 by Manuel Odorico Mendes (1858) and António Feliciano de Castilho (1867). A deity tells Aristaeus in this passage, also known as the “Song of Proteus”, why his bees died: it was due to a punishment of the souls of Orpheus and Eurydice, whom Aristaeus had seriously harmed. The method chosen for the analyses first involved the delimitation of concepts about the art of translating, such as “ethnocentric translation” and “ethical translation”, mainly based on Berman’s work. Then, a comparative and sampling reading of the Brazilian and Portuguese translators’ versions of Georgics IV, 453-527. The findings strongly support Odorico’s employment of Latinization procedures for the Portuguese language, whereas Castilho preferred an expressive pattern more similar to the vernacular. According to Berman’s terminology, we conclude that the Brazilian translator used parameters more in line with the concept of an “ethical translation” – or the one capable of evoking, without servility, the Letter of the original – than his Portuguese counterpart.

Abstract

In this article, we resort, above all, to the theoretical formulations of Antoine Berman (2007) in order to analyze the translations of Virgil’s Georgics IV, 453-527 by Manuel Odorico Mendes (1858) and António Feliciano de Castilho (1867). A deity tells Aristeus in this passage, also known as the “Song of Proteus”, why his bees died: it was due to a punishment of the souls of Orpheus and Eurydice, whom Aristeus had seriously harmed. The method chosen for the analyses first involved the delimitation of concepts about the art of translating, such as “ethnocentric translation” and “ethical translation”, mainly based on Berman’s work. Then, a comparative and sampling reading of the Brazilian and Portuguese translators’ versions of Georgics IV, 453-527. The findings strongly support Odorico’s employment of Latinization procedures for the Portuguese language, whereas Castilho preferred an expressive pattern more similar to the vernacular. According to Berman’s terminology, we conclude that the Brazilian translator used parameters more in line with the concept of an “ethical translation” – or the one capable of evoking, without servility, the Letter of the original – than his Portuguese counterpart.