Translating Marina Carr for a Brazilian audience: The interweaving of memories in theatre and translation

Fernandes, Alinne

Journal of Romance Studies (2014), 14, (1), 40–55.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3828/jrs.14.1.40
Language: English
Pages: 16

Abstract

In this article, I wish to demonstrate how the theatre translator, when tailoring his/her translation to suit a particular theatre audience, resorts to creative strategies so as to establish dialogues between the exporting and importing cultures s/he is dealing with. Based on both my own translation of By the Bog of Cats… (1998), written by contemporary Irish playwright Marina Carr, and fieldwork carried out with a group of acting students in Florianópolis, Brazil (June 2010), this article shows how the Irish play, when translated into Brazilian Portuguese, creates layers of intertextuality with Brazilian–Azorean folklore and Brazilian theatre tradition, most particularly with Nelson Rodrigues’s modern play Vestido de noiva [The Wedding Dress]. The local language of southern Brazil set in the mystically unsettling space of a bog invited the actors, the director, and the audience members to embark on a hybrid voyage to both familiar and foreign places.

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