The Effacement of the Superimposition of Languages: Investigating Antoine Berman’s Deforming Tendency in the Brazilian Translation of Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes [The Kindly Ones]
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Abstract
This article encompasses a reflection on translating in light of Antoine Berman’s work (1991), in which he proposes his ‘Deforming Tendencies’, especially seen in ethnocentric and hypertextual translations.
In order to comment and examine translations that distort the source text (e.g. belles infidèles) Berman claims that these tendencies clearly show the process of “destruction” of a work when it is being translated. In this article, I peruse the Portuguese translation of Goncourt-winner Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes, which, although published in 2006, continues to be the subject of much controversy. Its main character, an unregretful Franco-German ex-Nazi officer recounts his own story of WW2 as if the book was his own diary. Although French is the original language, the book is filled with military and Nazi-specific vocabulary in German. My aim is to demonstrate how the French language has been almost entirely erased to make greater room for the German and Portuguese in the Brazilian translation. According to Berman, this constitutes the effacement of the superimposition of languages.
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