Authorial traces in the self-translated text: the case of João Ubaldo Ribeiro

Maria Alice Gonçalves Antunes

Introduction

The object of analysis of the present paper is the process of self-translation – the

translation of an original text into a foreign language by its own author – in regard to the

particular case of the Brazilian novelist João Ubaldo Ribeiro. A renowned writer in his

home country and a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, João Ubaldo

Ribeiro’s books have always hit best-seller lists and he is currently considered one of

the top-selling authors of Nova Fronteira Publishing House, Rio de Janeiro. João

Ubaldo translated into English two of his most famous novels: Sargento Getúlio

([1971]1982) and Viva o Povo Brasileiro (1984). However, these two self-translated

novels – Sergeant Getúlio (1979) and An Invincible Memory (1989) – have failed to

arouse the curiosity of scholars and researchers in Brazil (Gomes 2005, 75) and abroad,

with very few specialists showing any interest in writing on the subject.

The aim of this article is to determine the extent to which the author who

translates his own text – João Ubaldo Ribeiro being a case in point – tries to remain

faithful to the traces left by him, either conscious or unconsciously, in the original

versions, thus creating the model author (Eco 1979a and 1979b). The analysis will also

include considerations put forward by Paulo Henriques Britto to assess if the self-

translator produces the kind of work in which approximation movements (Britto 1996)

predominate. Since João Ubaldo Ribeiro asserts in an email interview that “whatever is

written, is written” (Maria Alice Antunes, pers. comm.) and that he was “very respectful

to the originals” (Maria Alice Antunes, pers. comm.), this study seeks to investigate his

choices in an attempt to confirm if approximation movements made consciously or

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unconsciously by the self-translator are more frequent, thus transposing his work of

author who translates his own texts into a work of translation in its own right.

In the first section, the concepts of model author and model reader are discussed in

the light of Umberto Eco’s The role of the reader (1979a) and Lector in fabula (1979b).

Next, the notions of approximation and autonomization are introduced (Britto 1996).

Finally, we will turn to João Ubaldo Ribeiro’s literary works, discussing his “respect for

the originals”, here conceived as an approximation movement on the part of the self-

translator, and the effects on the reader produced by such respect.

The model author

In The Open Work (1962), Umberto Eco, a world renowned semiotician, literary

critic, novelist and professor, introduces the concept of “open text” and uses this

opportunity to initiate a discussion of the role of the reader. Eco asserts that “an open

text cannot be described as a communicative strategy if the role of its addressee (the

reader, in the case of verbal texts) has not been envisaged at the moment of its

generation qua text” (Eco 1979a, 3). Hence what is here asserted is a demonstration of

Eco’s belief in writing as a communicative activity and, since it is conceived as

communication, the presence of the reader – the message addressee – is of paramount

importance. Nevertheless, this is not the only role assigned to the reader since, in

addition to addressee, the reader will act as a coparticipant in the generative process of

the text. According to Eco (1979b, 7), “the author has to foresee a model of reader (the

model reader), who is supposedly able to deal interpretatively with the expressions in

the same way as the author deals generatively with them”. The task of “dealing

interpretatively with the text in the same way” may lead us to believe that interpretation

is a process of discovery of stable meanings encoded in a text. However, the reader who

plays the role of model reader also interferes with the creative process to the extent that

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he builds meanings from readings of traces left in the text, conscious or unconsciously,

by the author. It is also important to elucidate that the model reader is inscribed in the

text as a strategy and that interpretations consist of reconstructions of this strategy, a

potentially infinite process, but with limited readings, since there are interpretations that

cannot be sustained by internal textual coherence and, for this reason, are recognized as

“unsuccessful” by Eco (1979b, 41).

As discussed above, the model reader – an author’s construct – is a propulsive

agent of the writing process. He encourages the author to make choices that are

appropriate to the model reader envisaged by him and to inscribe them in the text so as

to shape the model author – a textual construct – to whom interpretative clues are

attributed (Eco 1994, 44). The author will hardly be able to explain all the traces present

in the original text since they will not always result from conscious choices, and, for this

reason, the model author is important in the communication process. As far as

translation is concerned, the translator turns to the model author intuitively and

reconstructs him in an attempt to be faithful to the original. It is important to stress that,

according to Umberto Eco, the model author does not resemble the empirical author in

any possible way. Choices for the referential reality inscribed in the text will not be

investigated from the perspective of the empirical author’s history or explanations due

to the fact that he will not always be able to explain his own strategies (Eco 1994, 44).

The model author is the one to whom the reader attributes the selection of syntactic

structures, lexical items and narrative strategies prescribed by the textual linear

manifestation which function as interpretative clues. Thus, for example, the model

author of An Invincible Memory is responsible for the presence of authorial traces such

as the use of language varieties associated with particular social groups at different

periods of time in history.

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 Finally, it is worth pointing out that, in Eco’s thinking, the empirical author has no

role to be played throughout the interpretation process of his own text. During the

writing process, he envisioned a reader who, while cooperating with the text by means

of the interaction with the authorial traces left there, also plays the role of a model

reader recreating the model author. However, it is important to observe that the reader

is not always capable of following traces left in the text and reconstruct the model

author by interpreting the text in a coherent manner. Therefore, it is common for the

reader to try to contribute with his previous knowledge of the world, including

knowledge of the empirical author’s life and work, fundamental to the construction of

the model author.

Indeed, it is believed that the reader’s previous knowledge may exert an

important role in the construction of the model author. While selecting a text, the reader

probably makes use of his knowledge of the empirical author and relates the author’s

name to a type of text: a short story, a novel or an essay, for instance. At this moment,

the empirical author is believed to begin to emerge as a key contributor in the

interpretation process. It is quite possible that the name João Ubaldo Ribeiro, for

example, written on a book cover, will prepare the reader to expect a literary text. The

reader also makes assumptions about “rhetorical and narrative schemata that are part of

a selected and limited repertoire of knowledge” (Eco 1979b, 66), based on previous

reading of other novels written by the author. And these assumptions influence his

choice of a particular text and the way he builds his expectations in relation to it.

Eco also asserts that the “selected and limited repertoire of knowledge” (1979b,

66) is not common to all readers. There will be individuals who, by possessing varied

cultural knowledge and intertextual competence, will be more motivated to cooperate

with a text and interpret it by means of clues that are provided. Nevertheless, there is an

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author (empirical) who, conscious or unconsciously, selected certain rhetorical and

narrative schema or certain textual strategies, encouraged by a model reader, throughout

the generative process of the text. That author has in his repertoire some cultural

knowledge and intertextual competence that are based on his own constructed

encyclopedic competence that may result from other reading activities. If, as asserted by

Eco, “no text is read independently from the experience the reader has acquired from

other texts” (1979b, 64), we may likewise consider that no text is written without taking

into consideration the experience the empirical author has acquired from other texts.

Such experience includes all the norms, values and poetics to which all texts and

authors are subject and that may well be questioned (Iser 1978). Norms, values,

coercions and poetics are discussed by André Lefevere (2007) in relation to translation,

but they also apply to the phenomenon of writing. We believe that writers, by being

subject to norms, values, coercions and poetics – which are also among the conditions

for the production of a piece of work –, make use of them all, either conscious or

unconsciously, during the generative process of their texts. Thus it is impossible to

consider that an empirical author is not subject to these factors while writing, or to

assume that such factors do not influence the creative process. We truly believe that the

empirical author responds to his model reader, constructed from the view acquired by

the author about readers in his relationship with the world and other works. When the

translator reads the novel he is going to translate, he takes on the role of the model

reader, cooperating with the text as he interprets in a coherent manner the traces he

comes across. However, the translator needs to envision another model reader and

recreate the model author inscribed in the original text, once he is subject to other

production conditions that ultimately influence and limit the translation.

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 I finally wish to stress that translators find themselves doubly limited so to

speak. They deal with limits represented by the model author that is inscribed in the

original and with those related to conditions by which the model reader of the translated

text finds himself restricted. The task of the professional translator consists, in broad

terms, in searching for a balance so that the product of his work will be a text that shall

promote communication with the foreign reader.

The movements of autonomization and of approximation

In an article entitled “Translation and creation” (1996), Paulo Henriques Britto

asserts that “translating and writing are indeed qualitatively different activities” ( 241,

author’s italics) and proposes a processual definition of translation on the basis of a

comparative analysis of his translation of the poem “Sunday Morning” by Wallace

Stevens, and of his poem “Pessoana” (243-250). Britto defines the main characteristics

of the two processes central to his analysis, namely, autonomization and approximation.

From the examples presented by Britto in his article, autonomization is

understood as a movement by which the translator (or the author) distances himself

from the original – or the originals – when translating (or when writing, in the case of

an author) a text. This distancing may manifest itself in very different forms. Among

them there is a selection of distinctive textual strategies, of varied stylistic resources or

even of lexical items with distinct literal senses that allow for new interpretations.

Approximation, on the other hand, encourages the translator to choose techniques that

promote the recognition of a previously existing text since they represent a search for

equivalence. It is, therefore, only natural that autonomization tends to predominate

when an author writes a text, inasmuch as he seeks to get rid, so to speak, of the

originals he had previously read. It is also natural that approximation predominates in

the work of the translator since, as a rule, translators struggle to be faithful to the

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original. Approximation may prevail in writing, but this may result in plagiarism. Yet

when autonomization prevails in translation, the result may be an adaptation, a new

original or a betrayal. In relation to his own creative works and translations, Britto

points to the predominance of autonomization in the case of creation, while in

translation “the structure is more or less balanced” (250-251). He goes on to assert that

the source text exerts a “controlling effect” (251) and describes that, once he perceived

his gradual departure from the original “Sunday Morning”, he discarded the movement

so as to prevent the text from becoming excessively autonomous (251). In writing

“Pessoana”, the opposite occurred: once he realized the text was veering too close to an

original (“Autopsicografia” by Fernando Pessoa), Britto discarded the movement and

searched for other solutions to make “Pessoana”, a poem of his own, a more

autonomous text. Therefore, he concludes that the original does not exert the

“controlling effect” over the new text – the creation – as it did in relation to translation.

The relevance of Britto’s conclusions lies in the possibility to demonstrate that

the “controlling effect” is not only exerted by the original. We consider that ideology,

patronage, and the poetics discussed by André Lefevere (2007), play key roles in

translation, regarded as a process that initiates at the moment a piece of work is chosen

for publication in another cultural system. We also contend that the “controlling effect”

exerted by the original over the creation may be seen as a kind of inside-out control.

The writer must distance himself of an original and keep at a distance from it to avoid

being accused of plagiarism if movements of approximation predominate in his writing.

It is interesting to observe, however, that the attempt to keep a distance from a specific

original does not ensure that the writer will actually move away from previously

conveyed ideas. It is our belief that it will not be possible to ensure the production of a

text that is pulled apart from all the originals the author had contact with, since they

7
constitute an integral part of his encyclopedic competence, which, either conscious or

unconsciously, he resorts to during the original writing process. However, it may be

asserted that a writer consciously tries to keep a distance from a (particular) previous

original so as to produce a text that may seem autonomous at a first glance.

Nevertheless, while in writing, autonomization surely is the expected movement, in the

case of self-translation, the answer is not that simple. Actually, there is no single answer

here.

Research and articles on the work of self-translators, such as Samuel Beckett

and Vladimir Nabokov (Fitch 1988; Connor 1989; Coates 1999), indicate that there are

movements in self-translations that demonstrate the author’s freedom from the text that

would be considered the original had it been written by another person. Once freed from

the control of the original text, the author may alter it significantly without being

accused of betrayal, since he is seen as the one who has authority over his texts. On the

other hand, it is undeniable that freedom is not absolute and that the original text exerts

control over the self-translated text, otherwise one would not recognize in self-translated

works other texts that were previously written. João Ubaldo Ribeiro contends that the

source text and the original model author, in the words of Umberto Eco, have a

determining and controlling role in the self-translating process.

We shall now examine the extent to which this control occurs. Due to space

limitations, our analysis will be restricted to the novel Viva o Povo Brasileiro / An

Invincible Memory. First, we will address the translation of toponyms that represents the

self translator’s choice of the approximation movement of the model author inscribed in

the original text. Next, we will provide examples that demonstrate autonomization

movements of the self-translator who distances himself from the model author inscribed

in the original.

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The original model author and the self-translator’s approximation movements

In An Invincible Memory, João Ubaldo employs the repetition technique for the

translation of toponyms such as Salvador, Itaparica, Pirajá, Cachoeira and Bahia. In

other cases, such as Vera Cruz de Itaparica and São João do Manguinho, for example,

the self-translator combines procedures (intratextual gloss and full translation of the

proper noun) and replaces the names of the two local settlements with Settlement of the

True Cross of Itaparica and Village of Saint John of the Little Swamp, respectively.

With regard to translation of toponyms, João Ubaldo points out that, when it seemed

“important to make geographical features (bay, harbor, etc.) known to the reader”

(Maria Alice Antunes, pers. comm.), he preferred to use a technique common to

translations from the respective time period: the technique of explanatory translation –

“a reformulation of a cultural-specific item from the source text, something like a

lexical periphrase” (Bentes 2005, 65) – and insert bay area to describe the geographical

make-up of Bahia’s Recôncavo. As a final observation, the literal translation of the

proper noun is used in the translation to English of Armação do Bom Jesus, Arraial do

Baiacu, Fonte do Porrãozinho, porto da Ponta da Cruz, Ponta das Baleias and Ladeira

da Conceição. The toponyms are replaced by Good Jesus Fishery, Puffer Fish Village,

Little Pot Spring, Cross Point Harbor, Whale Point and Conception Hill, respectively.

It can be noted that João Ubaldo moves from domesticating strategies to

foreignizing and hybrid ones (Bentes 2005). However, the classification of procedures

for the translation of toponyms in the case of Viva o Povo Brasileiro (An Invincible

Memory) presents some serious difficulties due to the fact that, although the English

language was used for the full translation of proper nouns, cities and villages are clearly

located outside the United States of America. In a study on translations of Latin

American literature, John Milton asserts that a closer look at some of Vargas Llosa’s

9
short stories, translated with the support and approval of the author, reveals that the

naturalization of cultural and geographical references may cause readers to forget that

the plot takes place in Latin America. This does not apply in relation to João Ubaldo’s

novel An Invincible Memory: the foreign reader will hardly forget that he is reading a

story whose action takes place somewhere outside the United States (Milton 1999, 171).

Milton (1999) further asserts that this fact can be explained in terms of the pride João

Ubaldo nourishes in relation to his country and its cultural values. However, we are of

the opinion that the option for techniques that ratify the presence of foreign elements in

translated texts unveils procedures that João Ubaldo himself has adopted as a strategy

from the beginning of his career: while facing the impossibility of accurate reproduction

of meaning (Maria Alice Antunes, pers. comm.), the writer chooses procedures that do

not erase the foreign element and that, simultaneously, indicate that the plot takes place

outside the borders of the United States. Nevertheless, the author still shows his deep

concern in helping the foreign reader who acts as model reader during the cooperative

act of reading. As the writer himself asserts, “either I offered some facilitating solutions

or else the novel would be full of explanatory footnotes and the book would get thicker

than the New York Phone Directory” (Maria Alice Antunes, pers. comm.). What we

understand by facilitation is the attempt to aid the reader who plays the role of model

reader to cooperate with the text mainly by means of the inclusion of intratextual

elements. In other words, João Ubaldo opted for the approximation to the original text

and, at the same time, he tried to get closer to the foreign reader by untangling

difficulties that might hinder the reading of his works. To meet this goal, the self-

translator employed procedures that include the presence of traces of his work in the

text proper and not outside it, as, for example, the use of glossaries and extratextual

notes.

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 Finally, it is interesting to mention that, in João Ubaldo’s own words, the aid

offered to the foreign reader who plays the role of model reader “involved small frauds

here and there” (1990, 3). Among these “small frauds” is the insertion of intratextual

glosses. By using the word “fraud”, the Brazilian writer seems to acknowledge the

notion that translations involve a betrayal of the original texts, an issue which has

permeated discussions on the translation activity over the centuries and which is

summarized in the popular saying traduttore, traditore. From our standpoint, he also

indicates that there are traces that should be attributed to the work of the translator

rather than assigned to the original model author.

The original model author and the autonomization movements of the self-

translator

Let us now examine examples of the author’s work that, in the self-translation

activity, reconstructs the original model author.

Example 1:

Quase se deu a tragédia há tanto tempo temida, porque Amleto apanhou

no cabide a bengala de jacarandá encastoada de bronze e marchou para

atingir Patrício Macário em qualquer lugar do corpo, somente não lhe

achatando a cabeça porque Clemente André se sentiu mal, levou a mão à

testa, gemeu fracamente e desabou na alcatifa. (Ribeiro 1984, 232)

The tragedy feared for so long almost happened. Amleto picked from the

rack his bronze-capped rosewood cane and started hitting Patrício

Macário, but he stopped short of bashing his head because Clemente

André raised his hand to his forehead, moaned limply, and collapsed on

the carpet. (Ribeiro 1989, 243)

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 We can see from above that the original text in Portuguese displays features of an

ordinary scene: a son being spanked. It is important to note, however, that in the process

of cooperation with the original text the reader is not actually led to “construct” the

spanking scene, since Amleto only “walks towards his youngest son to hit him”, but

then decides against it due to Clemente André’s indisposition. In the English text,

however, the same Amleto started hitting Patrício Macário. The lexical choice

attributed to the model author of the self-translation makes the reader, playing the role

of model reader, actually imagine the act of spanking. In other words, the model author

inscribed in the self-translated text goes beyond the limits imposed by the lexical choice

attributed to the original model author and opens new different paths for interpretation.

Example 2:

Não notou que a trilha fazia muitas curvas e que já não sabia direito onde

estava, quando chegou à beira de uma clareira ampla e, do outro lado,

avistou um grupo numeroso de negros e mulatos, somente dois ou três

brancos, cercados por fachos e fogueirinhas, reunidos em torno de

alguém agachado. (Ribeiro 1984, 488)

He did not notice that the trail curved excessively and he was no longer

sure of where he was when he came to the edge of a spacious clearing

and saw on the other side a large group of blacks and mulattoes […]

surrounded by torches and little bonfires, gathering around someone who

was crouched down. (Ribeiro 1989, 365)

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 In the above excerpt, Patrício Macário attends a religious ceremony conducted by

black slaves who kept in hiding in clearings amidst the woods to worship their deities.

While approaching the text from a personal ideological perspective that integrates his

encyclopedic competence, the reader, playing the role of model reader of the original

text, prefigures hypotheses about participants in an African cult. He knows that the

participation of white individuals in these ceremonies was not common, yet possible,

especially because the scene takes place in the year 1871, when slavery was about to be

abolished and the Rio Branco Law (also called Law of Free Birth) had already been

passed. In that specific historical period, there was a favorable atmosphere for the

integration between blacks and whites, yet at a timid pace at first. We may attribute to

the original model author the act of signaling the gradual transformation experienced by

the Brazilian society through the selection of participants in that cult. In the English

version, something different takes place. By excluding “two or three white men” from

the ceremony, the stereotypical view of candomblé as a black religion is ratified and an

allusion to the change from a pro-slavery and biased society to an apparently more

tolerant one is removed from the passage.

Final Considerations

We may thus conclude, based on a comparative analysis of Viva o Povo

Brasileiro and An Invincible Memory, that the original text exerts a controlling effect, as

suggested by Britto. João Ubaldo remains close to the original by avowing fidelity to

the word (Antunes 2009), and the approximation movements of the original model

author prevail during the self-translation process. It may also be perceived, through the

analysis of examples provided in this work, that João Ubaldo distances himself – on

very few occasions – from the original text by means of omission (example 2) and

extrapolation of the literal meaning (example 1). By omitting words, the self-translator

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suggests new paths for the interpretation to be carried out by the reader in relation to the

constitution of the Brazilian society (example 2). By substituting other items which

extrapolate the literal sense constructed through the cooperation with the linear

manifestation of the original text (example 1), the self-translator also suggests

interpretations that are radically distinct from the one suggested by the lexical choice

attributed to the original model author. Such modifications are attributed to the author’s

work, since they may not be justified by the attempt to facilitate communication with

the reader who plays the role of model reader in the self-translation, but rather by the

self-translator’s performance as a model reader of the original.

It is important to stress that the model author of the self-translation is different

from the model author of the original version since he is triggered by a distinct model

reader and, for this reason, demands distinct clues. The difference between them cannot

be attributed to the work of the author, who, in an attempt to refine his text, introduces

modifications that demonstrate the continuity of the creative writing process. In João

Ubaldo’s case, the changes introduced in the English edition are attributed to the work

of the translator who seeks to get closer to the foreign model reader without erasing the

Brazilian cultural features. A limited number of changes may be attributed to the work

of the author who distances himself from the original text. It should also be pointed out

that changes attributed to the work of the author who reconstructs the original version

are also made by translators. However, such changes are regarded as instances of

betrayal insofar as they imply deviation from the original versions and extrapolate the

limits of the text, here represented by the conditions of production and by the literal

sense built through the cooperation with the textual surface.

Finally, the work of João Ubaldo expresses the author’s concern to remain

within the boundaries represented by choices attributed to the original model author. He

14
makes use of approximation techniques as he translates toponyms into English and,

since such cultural specific items are known to be very frequently found in João

Ubaldo’s work, we may conclude that approximation movements on the part of the

model author are predominant in the work of the Brazilian self-translator.

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