To buy a new translation of a novel by Patrick White in Brazil today is impossible: Voss and The Tree of Man (or A árvore do homem) are available only on virtual second-hand bookstores.
We might feel inclined to believe that when there is the nomination of a writer for a Nobel Prize, as already described in the section about Patrick White in Sweden, the rush to carry out translations is quite common. However, this phenomenon curiously did not take place in Brazil. According to David Marr’s words, in connection with the author under study, at the time of his Nobel Prize nomination:
Translation sales were swift. There is a rule of thumb in publishing that a Nobel creates such an appetite for translations that they alone can yield as much cash as the prize. White was already published in French, German, Swedish, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Czech and Hungarian. Old translations were hurried back into the shops, and publishing houses which had only ever translated one or two of his titles now set out to fill the gaps. Greece joined the _______________
84 Ibidem.
85 SAINSBURY, Michael. Found in Translation. The Australian, Sydney. 13 Feb. 2010. Available at:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/found-in-translation/story-e6frg78o-1225828280475.
Accessed on: 13 Jan. 2014.
86 Ibidem.
list for the first time, buying the novels but not yet his superb Greek short stories.
Pirate editions appeared in the East. He reported ‘Mysterious going-ons in Russia’.
Shortly after the prize, O’Hea told White’s New York agent that translation sales were ‘very impressive… something over £50,000 – of which of course Patrick gets half’ (MARR, 1995, p. 538).
It calls our attention that Portuguese is mentioned in the quotation, though, in reality, it refers to Portuguese from Portugal, since the only novel translated into Portuguese was A árvore do homem (1956), and the publishing-house which bought the copyrights is from Lisbon (also, the translator is from there, Cardigos dos Reis), as seen in the item about Patrick White in Portugal. White won the prize in 1973, and another publication in a Portuguese-speaking country would appear 12 years later, in 1985, with Voss (this time, a Brazilian Portuguese translation). The information provided by a bibliographical analysis found on the National Library of Australia’s website has just been updated87, now indicating that the copyrights of the translation of Voss into Brazilian Portuguese belong to Nova Fronteira.
There was an unusual stream of events which deserves some research and provides us with a justification for this dissertation. As already mentioned, the milestone took place in 1973, and what happened in Brazil? In a news item published in Veja magazine, we have the following:
His [White’s] victory provoked a shock which was already antipodeanly felt in his native England and in his adoptive Australia. In London, bookmakers, betting on the French André Malraux as the one who would get the US$ 52,000, found out that the Nobel in Literature is still the same, digging up talents who are out of the contest88.
According to the journalist Leo Gilson Ribeiro, we are faced with an “unburied talent”, and his premonition in 1973 perhaps shows the reality of literary translation in Brazil, mainly after the announcement of an unexpected name:
Once again Europe bowed down to a continent. After the United States (Ernest Hemingway), Latin America (the Guatemalan Miguel Ángel Asturias) and Asia (the Japanese Yasunari Kawabata), and before an Old World where the contestants for the Nobel Prize in Literature seem scarce, the Swedish Academia discovered Australia. Under the shock of surprise, Brazilian editors will race to find out if Patrick White, 61, the winner, is not the name of a promontory near Sydney.
And they will demand that starving and heroic translators pass, into a hasty _______________
87 In our last research, carried out on their database in January 2014, that information was missing.
88 RIBEIRO, Leo Gilson. Patrick White, escritor australiano ganhador do Prêmio Nobel de Literatura em 1973.
Veja, São Paulo, 24 oct. 1973. In the original: “Sua vitória provocou um abalo que já se fez sentir antipodamente na sua Inglaterra natal e na sua Austrália de adoção. Em Londres, os book-makers que apostavam no francês André Malraux como vencedor dos 52 000 dólares do prêmio, constataram que o Nobel de Literatura continua o mesmo, desenterrando talentos absolutamente fora de páreo”.
Portuguese, a sometimes hermetically regional vocabulary (“grey dunny”, for example, means “outhouse” or “yard toilet”, “the little house” as it is called in the Brazilian countryside)89.
In the referred news item, three titles were mentioned: Voss, The Burnt Ones and The Solid Mandala. Concerning the latter, we have the following:
He’s not an "engagé", however. It’s not a political structure that he condemns, but the very human condition which he illuminates and deplores, invoking symbols from Hinduism when he wants to show a possible exit: the mystical interpretation of The Solid Mandala with its marginalized hermaphrodites, and its loneliness described as a challenge comparable to doing a jigsaw whose original image has been lost90.
Thirty-eight years later (and 26 after the translation of Voss), it seems that the interest in that talent has vanished, at least in the Portuguese language (in Brazil). It is quite surprising that The Solid Mandala was mentioned in this news item, which might have motivated its reading (or even its translation at that time), though nothing came out of it.
Thus, we find that the Nobel Prize was the main reason to translate Voss in Brazil, but what happened over this long period? Certainly, a failure, for the 12-year delay to publish Voss needs an explanation. If The Solid Mandala was translated right at the beginning of the 1970s in Europe, why was there such a delay in the only translation of Patrick White we have here, namely, Voss (published in 1985)?
The Brazilian scholar Déborah Scheidt, in her final paper for her Master’s Degree at the Federal University of the State of Paraná, made the following comment in the introduction of her work, entitled “All the Difference in the World”: Aspects of Alterity in Three Novels by Patrick White (presented in 1997):
One of the reasons that might be contributing to this lack of recognition with the wider public in Brazil is that, as far as I know, only three of White novels have been translated and published here up to now (Voss, The Tree of Man, and The _______________
89 Ibidem. In the original: “Mais uma vez a Europa se curvou diante de um continente. Depois dos Estados Unidos (Ernest Hemingway), da América Latina (o guatemalteco Miguel Ángel Asturias) e da Ásia (o japonês Yasunari Kawabata), e diante de um Velho Mundo onde parecem escassear os pretendentes ao Prêmio Nobel de Literatura, a Academia Sueca descobriu a Austrália. Sob o choque da surpresa, os editores brasileiros correrão para saber se Patrick White, 61 anos, o vencedor, não é o nome de um promontório perto de Sydney. E encarregarão tradutores famintos e heróicos de passar, para um português apressado, um vocabulário às vezes hermeticamente regional ("grey dunny", por exemplo, quer dizer "privada no quintal", a "casinha" do interior brasileiro)”.
90 Ibidem. In the original: “Ele não é um "engagé", porém. Não é uma estrutura política que ele condena. Mas a própria condição humana que ilumina e deplora, apelando para simbolismos do hinduísmo quando quer mostrar uma possível saída: a interpretação mística de The Solid Mandala com seus marginalizados hermafroditas, e sua solidão descrita como um desafio comparável ao de se montar um quebra-cabeças cuja imagem original se perdeu”.
Aunt’s Story). In addition to that poor representation, they are no longer commercially available91.
Voss and The Tree of Man were translated, but the third reference to The Aunt’s Story has proved impossible to find so far. We have checked innumerable websites and references seeking for the title translated into Portuguese (either European or Brazilian or in any other variant), but nothing has been found. A possible reason for this mistake might be the text introduced in the few editions of the Brazilian translations, which put a free translation of the title in parenthesis – for example, The Aunt’s Story (A história da tia) –, thus misleading the reader (the same procedure often appears on Wikipédia, so our level of distrust when researching translated titles needs to be constantly high).
The renowned translator Paulo Henriques Britto undertook the task of translating Voss into Portuguese, and so far, his work has not been debated and/or rejected. In truth, the book has been out of print, and the only possibility of acquisition is via the Internet (second-hand bookstores). In a brief analysis of that translation92, we have found several inconsistencies, such as the translation of the word ‘country’ in reference to Australia (at the time, it was not a country, but the colony of New South Wales). From those instances in the translation, the whole meaning of the story is affected, thus rendering a distorted historical narrative. In the case of The Solid Mandala, even though its setting is the urban environment of Sydney, historical aspects need to be duly handled too.
A brief interview with the translator helped clarify some issues. For instance, according to Paulo Henriques Britto, Voss was his first literary translation:
I was in my twenties and had read a lot since my tender years, but had very little experience of translation tout court, zero knowledge about Australia and Australian Literature. It was a tremendous challenge93.
Basically, according to his words, the text was translated in the 1970s (1977 or 1978, at most), and it took around 15 years to be launched. So, the work was done, but in this case the delay _______________
91 SCHEIDT, Déborah. “All the difference in the world”: Aspects of Alterity in Three Novels by Patrick White. Curitiba: UFPR, 1997. 150 f. Dissertação (Mestrado em Letras) – Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras. Curitiba, UFPR, 1997.
92 This issue was analysed in more detail in ALEXANDER, Ian; STEFANI, Monica. Your Country is of Great Subtlety: Aspects of the Brazilian Translation of Patrick White’s Voss. Ilha do Desterro A Journal of English Language, Literatures in English and Cultural Studies, Florianópolis, v. 69, n. 2, p. 107-116, Jun. 2016.
Available at: https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/desterro/article/view/2175-8026.2016v69n2p107.
93 BRITTO, Paulo Henriques. Perguntas (tradução de Patrick White) [personal message]. Message received by [email protected], on 28 Feb. 2014. In the original: “Voss foi minha primeira tradução literária. Eu tinha vinte e poucos anos, lia muito desde a mais tenra infância, mas tinha muito pouca experiência de tradução tout court, zero conhecimentos a respeito de Austrália e literatura australiana. Foi um tremendo desafio”.
was the responsibility of the publishing house. When asked about the workflow and his participation in the decision-making process, professor Paulo is quite straightforward: “At that time, we handed the book to the publishing house and it did whatever it wanted with our translation. There was no contact with the proofreader, nor the editor. The book got published only many years later94”.
One element which stands out in the cases described so far in this dissertation is the translator’s passion – therefore, knowledge, contact, experience – about the author being translated. When asked about his previous knowledge and reading of Patrick White and the choice of his name to translate such a novel, professor Paulo again makes a remarkable comment:
I had never read anything by him. They gave me the book because I was willing to start translating, to earn more money; I went to Nova Fronteira, presented my poor CV – I had translated 1 or 2 books, none of them literary – and they gave me Voss95.
Thus, this is again one more argument that puts the blame on the publishing house: was Voss really a left over on their list of publications? Or were they testing with a privileged challenge one of our renowned translators, who at that time was starting his career? There is a paramount element in all undertakings analyzed so far: passion. If you do not love the author you are translating, chances are that your work is not going to be as good as it might be. In relation to this, in his essay Writer’s Writer and Writer’s Writer’s Writer, Julien Barnes claims that the first known translation of Madame Bovary into English was done by Juliet Herbert, governess to Flaubert’s niece and later his lover96. It is said that she taught Flaubert English, but it is not certain whether he actually learnt the language or not. As proof, Flaubert’s library contained titles by “Le Grand William”, so, perhaps Flaubert at least attempted to read Shakespeare in the original. When Herbert’s translation was ready, Flaubert wrote, in a letter to the Parisian publisher Michel Lévy, that it was “a masterpiece”.
According to Barnes, it is a sad fact that the manuscripts proving these events were lost. This brief description helps to corroborate that the will to translate coupled with passion results in _______________
94 Ibidem. In the original: “Na época a gente entregava o livro à editora e ela fazia o que bem entendia com a nossa tradução. Nenhum contato com revisor nem preparador. O livro só foi publicado muitos anos depois”.
95 Ibidem. In the original: “Nunca tinha lido nada dele. Me deram o livro porque eu estava querendo começar a traduzir, para ganhar mais dinheiro; fui à Nova Fronteira, apresentei meu parco CV – havia traduzido um ou dois livros, nenhum deles de literatura – e me deram Voss”.
96BARNES, Julian. Writer’s Writer and Writer’s Writer’s Writer. London Review of Books, London, v. 32, n.
22, p. 7-11, Nov. 2010. Available at: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n22/julian-barnes/writers-writer-and-writers- writers-writer. Accessed on: 25 May 2016.
careful works of translation. More than funding, the translators’ passion for their craft is what moves this activity. And arguably this is what had moved Patrick White in his career as well:
he might have stopped writing and taken up painting, for instance. However, a French translator’s passion for his novels represented a turning point, which deserves to be echoed.
After the presentation of these references, one thing is clear: the translator, in addition to contributing to the literary system of his/her own language by inserting a new novel and making it available to people, in a way ends up acting as a memorialist, in the sense that s/he starts a deep research into the life of the author which sometimes takes him/her to unintended places, unveiling otherwise complex and obscure concepts. Notwithstanding, in our particular case, a mental drawback needs to be addressed, and which might explain why Patrick White has not deserved a place in Brazil (and this is not related to translation):
If your son says that he intends to learn English in Australia, doubt it. Real English is learnt in England or in the United States. Stays in Australia yield, at the most, a certain fluency in Australian – that language with a peculiar pronunciation which, in British ears, causes a damage comparable to the impact of a demented boomerang97.
Perhaps these words shallowly justify why most Brazilians lack the interest to study the literatures of the South. The enterprise taken up by Universidad San Martín in Argentina, supported by a Nobel Prize winner and other higher education institutions from Australia and South Africa, is a worthy endeavour, and this dissertation certainly is part of that positive turnaround, precisely to try to undermine and eventually change this poor and prejudiced view which, sadly, still seems to predominate at the academy as well as with the broader audience in Brazil. This preconceived idea is the starting point for the next chapter of this dissertation:
reading Patrick White in Australia and then in Brazil, discussing the challenges imposed in both countries in terms of translation and literary studies.