Abstract
Fictional texts which enact narrative perspective through regional specific speeches confront the literary translator with almost insuperable difficulties. The orality, constructed in the flux of unilateral dialogue and stream of conscience, is more than a problem of reproduction: the essential aspect is the perspective and the identification(s) offered to the implicit reader. In the target text this means a peculiar challenge, not only for a different language but also for a different reader, if a binary linguistic constellation is thwarted by a third language. This can be shown in the case of the hybrid linguistic situation in João Guimarães Rosa’s Meu tio o Iauaretê (1961) in comparison with its translation into German by Curt-Meyer Clason in Mein Onkel der Jaguar (1981). Our approach is guided by the category of speech of immediacy (Ágel & Hennig), taking also into account the translator’s self-reflexive process as manifest in epilogue and glossary.
Key Words
João Guimarães Rosa; Curt Meyer-Clason; Speech of immediacy; Tupi / nheengatu