Abstract

In this article, we seek to ponder over the implications of translation choices in short literary narratives. With that aim in mind, we examined the translation strategy adopted by Katrina Dodson (Lispector, 2015) when translating the names assumed by the protagonist of Clarice Lispector’s (1979) short story “Um dia a menos”, or “One day less”, in English. The translated short story was published in the collection The Complete Stories (2015) under the supervision of Benjamin Moser, and it was acclaimed by the critics. For her translation, Dodson received the PEN Translation Prize (2016). Our assumption is that every short story forms a cohesive universe, such that the translation of any of its elements to another language implies a meaningful choice (Galindo, 2015). Moser’s translation project for Clarice’s short stories follows a foreignizing approach, one that Dodson abides by with competence. Our criticism on the translation of the names was motivated by our analysis and translation of the short story in question, published in the journal Cadernos de literatura em tradução in 2003.

Keywords
Translation of literary prose; Foreignizing translation; Clarice Lispector; The Complete Stories