Trabalhos de amor perdidos em Salvador: a comédia shakespeariana no falar popular da capital baiana

Abstract

The present thesis is an analysis, from the perspective of the Translation Studies, of how the process of resignification and updating of the dramatic text Love's labor’s lost (ca. 1595), by William Shakespeare (1564-1616), was recreated by us in a new commented translation to the Portuguese language, more specifically to the dialect of Bahia, also known as Baianês, focusing on the puns and insinuations that characterize the obscene language existent in this comedy, and which preserves the subtleties and the comedy present in this aspect of the Shakespearean text, making it accessible to the Brazilian contemporary reader and audience. The research work first sought to identify the occurrences of words and expressions present in the dramatic text Love's labour's lost that characterize an obscene language, verifying whether or not such occurrences have undergone a process of updating and resignification in the contemporary translations of the Brazilian translators Bárbara Heliodora and Beatriz Viégas-Faria. Also, it attempted to translate the dramatic text Love's labor's lost into the Baianês language, with commented content highlighting the resignification and update of the words and expressions carrying an obscene connotation identified in the Shakespearean text. The comparative character of the proposed research is mediated by poststructuralist theoretical reflections, with a special focus on the concepts articulated by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida about deconstructivism, as well as the contributions of scholars who have works specifically devoted to the analysis of the Shakespearean language, such as Stanley Wells, David Crystal and Ernest Adrian Mackenzie Colman. Our considerations, supported by comparative research of the elements present or omitted in the translations involved in this study, seek to ground the reflection about the possibility of a new translation of Love's labor’s lost, based on the idea that the translation process involves reading and interpretation operations that do not only release and authorize the translator to develop the practice of new creative possibilities, but also rescues characteristics of the source text that may have been omitted from the contemporary readers of William Shakespeare at certain points in history.