Translating the universe of Harry Potter into a pluricentric language. How culture influences the translator’s choices


Abstract


Portuguese is the official language in seven countries and is co-official in three more territories. It is also a pluricentric language, given that it has two distinctly codified norms, i.e., two standard varieties – the Brazilian one used in Brazil, and the European one used in the remaining territories. The first translation of the Harry Potter series into Portuguese was published in Portugal in 1999, followed by the translation published in Brazil in 2000. While the language is the same (albeit with two different standards), the choices made by the Portuguese and Brazilian translators differed much more than the grammatical and lexical differences that exist between the two varieties and characterise them as such. Resorting to a comparison of the translation of selected characters’ names and neologisms, this paper analyses the choices made by the Portuguese translators (initially one, but ultimately a team that included, at different moments, six translators) and the Brazilian translator (only one and always the same for the seven volumes). The different choices point to two very different translation projects that were grounded on cultural assumptions about the series’ readership – since the translation project was defined for the first book, clearly a children’s fantasy book, the target-audience was composed of children aged 9-12. Children that age in Brazil are not as familiar with English as Portuguese children, which justifies, to a great extent, the domesticating translation published in Brazil as opposed to the foreignizing one published in Portugal.

Keywords: Harry Potter series; literary translation; fantasy; neologism; pluricentric languages

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