Tradução Indireta

Second-order interference in literature: commending mediating texts

According to Toury (1995: 143), ‘when one encounters translations from the first third of the 20th century, it is often difficult to determine whether they were textually mediated at all […] or whether they only show traces of second-order interference’. This presentation argues, however, that in the first third of the 21th century, this scenario could be on the cusp of transformation. This means translators could be making sure to show traces of second-order interference in their translations, indicating that their work was an indirect translation: a translation of a translation (1994: 11). For this reason, this presentation does a basic exploratory research of Soriano’s Brazilian Portuguese translations of the collection of Chinese tales authored by Gan Bao and Pu Songling. It is clearly stated in this collection that the translator’s work is a series of indirect translations. From the analyses, the following excerpt of the short story The Bitten Ghost by Pu Singling can be highlighted: ‘o velho homem a examinou atentamente: teria a mulher uns trinta anos’ [the old man carefully examined her: the woman would have been about thirty years old]. Based on Noll (2008) and Cunha&Cintra (2016), it is possible to affirm that the use of the word ‘teria’ [would/could have], in this case, is not a typical lexical choice in Brazilian Portuguese when stating a fact. Therefore, it is arguable that the translator chose to highlight the mediating text, which was written in English, by mimicking the language’s third conditional tense. It could be affirmed that the translator’s choices were just based on a source-culture-oriented methodology. But, by having made clear that these translations were all indirect, it could be inferred that the translator meant to highlight the mediating language in his translations without compromising them.


Cunha, Celso & Cintra, Lindley. 2016. Nova Gramática do Português Contemporâneo, 7th ed, (Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon)

Noll, Volker. 2008. O português brasileiro - formação e contraste, 1st ed, (Rio de Janeiro: GLOBO)

Toury, Gideon. 1995. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond, 1st ed, (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing)

The study of forms of address in translation is a type of register analysis that provides an interesting insight into the way specific linguistic patterns are transferred from one language to another. This article explores how the forms of address are rendered in the Turkish translation of A Jangada de Pedra (1986) by the Portuguese author José Saramago. Paratextual and textual analyses demon­strate that this work has been translated into Turkish through the English translation of the book, and that the English translation has influenced the choices of the Turkish translator. The findings of the study seem to support the hypothesis that using a mediating language/text that lacks similar forms of address as the ultimate source and the target languages/texts can cause shifts in tenor, which results in a different reading of interpersonal relationships between fictional characters in the target text.

The study of forms of address in translation is a type of register analysis that provides an interesting insight into the way specific linguistic patterns are transferred from one language to another. This article explores how the forms of address are rendered in the Turkish translation of A Jangada de Pedra (1986) by the Portuguese author José Saramago. Paratextual and textual analyses demon­strate that this work has been translated into Turkish through the English translation of the book, and that the English translation has influenced the choices of the Turkish translator. The findings of the study seem to support the hypothesis that using a mediating language/text that lacks similar forms of address as the ultimate source and the target languages/texts can cause shifts in tenor, which results in a different reading of interpersonal relationships between fictional characters in the target text.