• Intratextual gloss
Instead of adding peritext to the TT, the translator includes information within the text proper, which can be a subtler and less noticeable and disturbing procedure, especially for children. O Pudim Mágico has one case of intratextual gloss (combined with the procedures of extratextual gloss and synonymy) to make it clear that an animal called “flying fox” is in fact a bat and not a fox. The treatment of this and the other Australian animals and their names will be further addressed in Part 2 of this chapter.
2.1.2. Strategy of Substitution
Also in ascending order of intercultural manipulation, this set of procedures makes the TT more distant from the ST and thus the SC less visible. Again, the result can be associated with Venuti’s domesticated translation, although the concepts are not synonymous.
• Synonymy
When the CSI is replaced with a synonym in the second occurrence, after being clarified through other procedures, mostly for stylistic criteria. This procedure was employed to treat CSIs in TMP in two passages: the word “port” has become vinho do porto [port wine]
in the TT, which could also be considered a case of “intratextual gloss.” However, this drink is not an Australian or English CSI, since it is from Portugal and is known in other countries and cultures, including Brazil. Both expressions porto and vinho do porto are used in Brazilian Portuguese, but the latter is more common and thus more likely to be identifed by a child reader as a drink. All the following occurrences of “port” are translated as vinho do porto, with the exception of “port bottle” (LINDSAY, 2006, p. 131), translated as garrafa de vinho [wine bottle]. Another example is the aforementioned Flying-fox, which is identified as a Morcego do tipo Raposa-voadora [Flying-fox Bat] (intratextual gloss) in the first occurrence, and as o Morcego [the Bat] in the second.
• Limited universalization
When the translator replaces the CSI with a less specific and more usual item from the SC. Aixelá exemplifies this strategy with the phrase “five grand” translated into “five thousand dollars” (cinco mil dólares in Portuguese), more easily understandable than the culture-specific “grand”, which does not have a conventional equivalent in other languages, such as Portuguese or Spanish. This procedure was not employed in the translation of TMP, unless one admits that the definition of what is “limited” and what is “absolute universalization” is not clearly established and that some procedures may overlap.
• Absolute universalization
The foreign element is replaced with a culturally neutral item, such as the example provided by Aixelá: “Chesterfield” (a Canadian synonym for “sofa”) is translated only as the word for “sofa” in the TL (in Brazilian Portuguese, sofá). In O Pudim Mágico, “Pears’ soap”
in the sentence “the air smells like Pears’ soap” (LINDSAY, 2006, p. 36) has become only sabonete: “o ar tem perfume de sabonete.” This soap brand is not Australian, but English, and its most important quality in the text is its scent. Besides, a mention to the brand in the TT would not be understood and might need explanation, which could cause an unnecessary
interruption. When the novel was written, in 1918, there were not many different soap brands and Pears would be immediately recognised as a fragrant soap. In English, the word “soap”
does not specifically denote the substance used to bathe, so the brand makes it clear that it is scented and it is not the kind of soap used to wash, e.g., clothes. In Portuguese, “soap” can be translated as both sabão and sabonete, the former denoting the substance in general and, usually, the kind used to wash clothes, and the latter denoting the fragrant and more delicate kind to wash one’s face and body. Therefore, only the word sabonete is sufficient and the brand is redundant.
Another employment of the “absolute universalization” technique is found in the translation of one personage’s surname, Brandysnap, to be analysed in the second part of this chapter. The treatment of Australian culture-specific items such as “swag” and “swagman”,
“billy”, and “the bush” (see chapter 1) also followed this procedure, as it will also be analysed in the second part of this chapter.
• Naturalization:
The CSI is replaced with a specific item of the TC. To Aixelá’s view, this procedure is not frequent in literary translation, except in children’s literature, in which he judges to be in decline as well (AIXELÁ, 1996, p. 62). This technique is in fact more common in the translation of children’s literature, but it depends on whether the translation project is more domesticating or foreignising. As O Pudim Mágico is a rather foreignised TT, this technique was avoided in the process. “Naturalization” in this case would not sound natural at all, since explicit references to Brazilian nature and/or culture would have introduced exotic poetry/music, fauna or flora into the story. Moreover, it would have been inconsistent with the emphasis on the extra material created to handle the unknown Australian elements in the book. Accordingly, songs, animals or vegetation have not been replaced with Brazilian ones.
• Deletion:
A word, sentence, paragraph, page or entire chapter is deleted to meet stylistic or ideological criteria,
because it is not relevant enough for the effort of comprehension required from the readers, or that it is too obscure and they [the translators] are not allowed or do not want to use procedures such as the gloss, etc.” (AIXELÁ, 1996, p. 64)
This procedure is often used in the translation of children’s literature when there is a cultural clash making elements that are acceptable in the SC when and where the story is written become inconvenient or offensive when transposed to another culture and/or time.
Sometimes, it may be a problem of translatability, when the translator judges that there is not an approximate version of the source in the target language and opts for omitting a passage. It is questionable to classify this as a strategy of “substitution,” since the passages deleted are not replaced with something else, and the extent of omissions may result in abridgement and raise the question of whether the TT is still a translation or has become an adaptation. The only employment of “deletion” in O Pudim Mágico involves an ideologically loaded item and it is rather a case of “attenuation” (discussed below in section 2.1.3).
• Autonomous Creation:
The last procedure among the strategies of “substitution” is the one through which the translated text supposedly becomes the closest to the TC and the farthest from the source.
Aixelá uses the example of the novel The Maltese Falcon (1929), by Dashiell Hammett, which is rendered in Spanish as El Halcón del Rey de Espanã [The King of Spain’s Falcon], adding a non-existing reference in the source to the TT (AIXELÁ, 1996, p. 64). Actually, the reference exists in the novel, because the falcon belongs to the King of Spain, but this fact is not explicit in the original title. The scholar judges that this technique is rarely used, except for children’s literature, especially in domesticated translations, as it was the case of our translations of the Alice books (FURTADO and KUGLAND, 2007; 2012). Since different criteria guided the translation of TMP, this procedure was not employed to handle CSIs in it.
translator omits a CSI and adds another to the TT at another point, in order to create a similar