Izabela Leal

The translator’s innocence and liberty

Portuguese poet Herberto Helder published several works of translation. Ouolof, published in 1997, includes the poem “Carta para Rugero Jacobi” by Emilio Villa, an Italian poet living in Brazil. Curiously, however, the poem had already been written in Portuguese. Herberto Helder thus poses the question: “why do I include here, in this book of poems originally written in other languages [...] and changed into Portuguese, a poem I did not alter in any way?” The answer points to the connection between the translator’s innocence and liberty, on the one hand, and the construction of the poetic idiom, on the other. The purpose of this presentation is to examine the nature of this relation.

Keywords: poetry, liberty, Herberto Helder

Biography

Izabela Guimarães Guerra Leal is an Associate Professor of Portuguese Literature at the Institute of Literature and Communications of the Universidade Federal do Pará in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She holds a PhD and an MA in Portuguese Literature. Her research focuses on literary translation and, in particular, the relationship between the poetic idiom and the translator’s liberty. Her most recent work No horizonte do provisório : ensaios sobre tradução, with Walter Costa and Mayara Ribeiro Guimarães, was published in 2013.