Ad nauseam repetition of clichés and trites? An analysis of translator’s paratexts

• Autor(a) principal: Hoff, Sara Luiza
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Belas Infiéis
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.unb.br/index.php/belasinfieis/article/view/30342
• topic: Tradução. Tradutores. Paratextos de tradutores. Prática tradutória. Dificuldades de tradução.; Translation. Translators. Paratexts by translators. Translation process. Difficulties of translation.

This paper reflects on paratexts written by translators ”“ forewords, afterwords, presentations, introductions and notes addressing the translation process. It aims to demonstrate the thematic diversity in this type of text. In order to do so, we selected sixty paratexts written by translators, extracted from works of different genres, including literary works, poetic collections, technical books of different fields, and non-fiction works. This corpus was analyzed quantitatively ”“ determining the amount of paratexts that address certain subjects ”“ and qualitatively ”“ selecting meaningful passages referring to the main themes examined by translators. The analysis identified twelve distinct thematic categories: adaptation, grammatical aspects, specificities of each translation, footnotes/endnotes, history of the translation, issues relating to form, issues relating to semantic content, theoretical linguistic and textual issues, theoretical translation issues, terminological issues, mentions of consulted texts and mentions of previous translations. The categories with the most allusions are issues relating to form, which concern the style and tone of the text; discussion of the specificities of each translated work, such as the translation of proper names and titles; and references to issues frequently discussed in theoretical reflections on translation, debating notions such as fidelity, negotiation and translatability and untranslatability. Terminological issues, grammatical aspects, choosing to use or not to use footnotes, retelling the history and explaining the motivation for the translation and allusions to texts consulted during the translation process are also representative. The analysis highlights the heterogeneity of subjects related to the translation process discussed in translators’ paratexts, which can be understood as a way to emphasize the importance of translators and their practice and a way of allowing readers to be aware of how complex the translation process is.