BREZILIAN TRADITION

The 180 million inhabitants of Brazil, the largest country

in Latin America, are of mixed descent: Brazilian
Indian, African, Asian and European. But they share a
common language, Portuguese, which is the official
language of Brazil. Brazil is therefore part of the
Lusophone, or Portuguesespeaking community, which
includes Portugal.
BRAZILIAN LANGUAGE HISTORY
• Old Brazilian is a subfamily of the Tupi languages of South America and
includes more than 10 groups of languages. The best known groups are
Tupi and Guarani. In Brazil, families continued to speak this tupi-guarini
language among themselves until the middle of the 18th century. As
colonizers arrived and settled in the country and the indigenous population
began to coexist or intermarry with immigrants, the Brazilian language
spoken among the people began to change over time. With new words,
phrases and expressions added from Portuguese and African languages,
the Brazilian language has constantly evolved and diversified.
 In mid-1758, the speaking and teaching of the Tupi-guarani language was
completely banned by the colonial authorities. The main purpose of this ban,
which would last for many years, was to increase the use of Portuguese.
 The First Translators
• The first recorded document about Brazil is a letter written by Pero Vaz de Caminha,
the scribe in Cabral’s fleet, to the Portuguese king, Manuel I (1475–1521), on 1 May
1500 to relate the finding of new lands (Caminha 1966; Cortesão 1967). The same
document also records a translation act: it describes how the Portuguese and Indians
attempted to communicate with each other by means of gestures, and how a
deportee, Afonso Ribeiro, was left on shore with the Indians to learn their language.
It also reports that another deportee and two sailors deserted the expedition in order
to remain with the Indians. From then on, every expedition that went to Brazil left
behind adventurers and deportees who learned the Indian languages and who then
acted as interpreters between Indians and Europeans. These men were called línguas,
or ‘tongues’, and their numbers continued to grow during early colonial times.
 Portuguese Hegemony
• In 1808, when the Portuguese royal family fled Napoleon's troops, they
arrived in Brazil and tried to make Portuguese the mother tongue.
• Dom João (king of Portugal) elevated Brazil to the status of a kingdom on
a par with Portugal. More importantly, he lifted the ban on printing.
• Finally, with Brazil's independence, Portuguese became an official
language.
The History of Written
Translation in Brazil
History of Translation in
the World
 Profession, Training and Research
• The profession of sworn interpreter was regulated by a Royal Decree in 1851. Sworn
interpreters had to prove their command of foreign languages and pay an annual tax. At
the time, women were banned from the profession. In 1943, a new decree allowed
women to join the profession; today the majority of sworn translators are women.
• Until the late 1960s, there was no specialized training for translators in Brazil. As a
result, Brazil's translators were mainly famous writers and those who learned foreign
languages at school or abroad, or those with a university language diploma. A decree of
the Ministry of Education in the 1960s enabled the Faculties of Arts to expand their
language courses to train translators at university level. The first such courses were
offered at the Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre and at the Federal
University of Rio Grande do Sul.
Paulo Rónai
• He has had a great influence
on translation work in Brazil.
He has written books on
translation. Escola de
tradutores (‘Çevirmenler
Okulu', 1952) was the first
translation book published in
Brazil.
 The Campos Brothers

"The brothers Augusto de Campos (1931-) and

Haroldo de Campos' (1929-) own theoretical
reflections on translation practices are the most
fundamental thing that can be called a theory of
translation in Brazil.They prioritize translation
approaches over content and favor the
introduction of new forms into the target
language.They removed Western images from
Brazilian culture.
 References
• Ceviribilim.com
• Dergipark
• Nettetercüme.com
• Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies
Zeliha Alpinay Yıldırım
220917054