Ana de Castro Osório and Luigi Motta: from mediation to translation

Abstract

Portuguese writer, editor and activist Ana de Castro Osório played an essential role in the creation of literary collections dedicated to adventure and travel novels, where Italian authors such as Emilio Salgari and his epigone Luigi Motta were at the forefront. She, in collaboration with her son Miguel Osório de Castro, was responsible for translating Luigi Motta’s first novel published in Portugal, which came out in two volumes entitled O túnel submarino and Mistérios do oceano (1927), to which several other works by the Italian writer were soon to be added, forming a series within the broader collection of adventure novels published by Romano Torres. The translation of Il tunnel sottomarino, characterized by maintaining the typical elements of adventure novels that the Italian author explores so well, refrains from domesticating the text, which hints at the potential for linguistic innovation fostered by translations of paraliterature in the 1920s and 1930s in Portugal.

Keywords
Ana de Castro Osório; Luigi Motta; literary translation; translated literature; adventure novels