Education
Translation
April 10, 2025
The “faithful” translator
Context and situation dependency make translation fidelity a lost cause
The fidelity of the translator is and always will be a lost and irreparable cause. Although this sentence sounds harsh, it expresses the purest reality. No self-respecting translator — professionally and financially — will do a word-for-word and literal translation, as translation is dependent on the context and the situation of the source text (original) and the target text (translated). This creates the need for localization and cultural adaptation as translation strategies, without which the result can be the loss of cultural and linguistic nuances, hindering comprehension by the target audience and the propagation of the content.
It is common to hear that any bilingual person can act as a translator. Besides this suggestion invalidating years of study and practice by a professional in the field, reality could not be further from the truth, because knowing a language does not make a person a translator, but rather a holder of knowledge.
Translating requires a cluster of skills and specific knowledge that go beyond mastery of the two languages. The translator’s role is to assess the need for understanding and accessibility for the target audience, and to follow language knowledge, which is not limited to linguistic factors — cultural and technical understanding and writing and/or speaking skills —, also taking into account aspects such as localization, adaptation of characters, humorous factors, naturalness of dialogues, and cultural factors. Since the latter, most of the time, are not equally interchangeable between the original and the translated text.
The main problem remains under the fact that, in language, everything is culturally produced, including itself. For Nord (1997), the translator acts as a bridge of communication between the source culture and the target culture, transferring this communication from their prior knowledge and being responsible for defining what the scope is. The interpretation, in turn, depends heavily on the translator’s personal experience and world knowledge.
As an example, we can take the reality show “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo”, from the TLC network, which portrays the reality of a family from the interior of Georgia, in the United States. In the dubbed version, Francisco Brêtas, responsible for the translation and dubbing of one of the main characters, chose to be guided by the “caipira” (countryside) accent from Minas Gerais for the adaptation of the work. When asked about the choice, the voice actor stated that the reality production itself wanted to maintain the family’s caipira essence, and for that to happen, he opted for the support of what he has mastered since childhood: being from Minas Gerais.
Translation is often a challenge, as it is necessary to consider the specificities of each language and the translation process, especially when dealing with the delicacy of the audiovisual field. It is also necessary to consider the circumstances in which the target text was created, which may differ from those of the source text. Therefore, the translation professional must prioritize the “why” over the “how”, making the objective prevail over how it is achieved.
For Bezerra (2012), the processes of recodification interlingual cannot be explained if they are isolated from the entire set of relations between source and target language. It is necessary to evaluate the uniqueness of the multiple modes of language and culture. Translation must be based on extralinguistic factors, symbolizing a transition in the paradigm of the translation process.
Brazilianize vs Americanize
It is important to understand that translation and intercultural relations function in a dynamic manner, based on the premise that two elements do not maintain the same relationship over a considerable period of time. In this context, translation and dubbing in Brazil stand out positively in the global context, by prioritizing the method of “brazilianizing” works, bringing the Brazilian audience closer to the original work in a smooth and natural way.
A “well-done” translation resonates and reverberates with the audience, perpetuating itself in different ways. Below I bring some examples within films and books where translation acted assertively in conquering the target audience and in the propagation of the work in Brazil, impacting the producer financially, and the audience, affectively.
The first is the movie “Shrek 2”: in one of the scenes, the character Donkey is passing by a relatively large bush next to his companion, Shrek. In the original, Donkey expresses himself by saying “There’s a bush that shaped like Shirley Bassey” (there is this bush that looks like Shirley Bassey). The grammatical agreement error in English is intentional and brings a naturalness to the character’s speech, and the mention of the singer Shirley Bassey adds a humorous tone to the scene.
The translator had the option to keep the singer’s name in the Portuguese version, mainly because she gained prominence in the music industry in the second half of the 20th century — lending her voice to the soundtracks of the James Bond franchise. However, to bring the Brazilian audience closer to the work, the translation was finalized as “And this bush here that looks just like Fafá de Belém”, which resulted in the humorous factor being masterfully applied. For this reason, the scene remains iconic and is constantly remembered, even after 20 years since the film’s premiere.
The second example is allocated within the financial context, where the translation surpassed the impact of the original work and was adopted as the “best version” by the Portuguese-speaking audience – a rare event within the Brazilian literary community. In 2014, according to a news report published by Marcelo Hessel (critic and journalist) on the Omelete portal, Brazil grossed about US$ 41.5 million shortly after the premiere of the film “Breaking Dawn – Part 2” (from the teen saga of books and films “Twilight”), which was seen by over 1 million viewers on its release day.
These numbers originated from the previous consumption of the translated books, which, according to the opinions of participants in online discussions on platforms like Reddit, conveyed greater depth to the characters and localized the language according to each one’s corresponding age, despite the work being “Americanized” in all aspects: customs, cities, and names. This success positioned Brazil as the film’s third-largest market in the world just two weeks after its theatrical release.
Contrary to what it seems, most of the changes made in the translation are usually so smooth that the viewer doesn’t have time to realize they are consuming a translation.
The third and final example is taken from the work mentioned at the beginning of the text, the reality show “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo”, from the TLC network, televised in 2012. The work features several translation strategies that are not relevant here, but there is a scene where the translator was insightful in making the final choice. The family is buying pumpkins for the arrival of Halloween when the main character, Alana, spots a large pumpkin and asks her mother to buy it. The mother, June, worried about the possible cost, exclaims: “That pumpkin probably costs fifty dollars” (aquela abóbora provavelmente custa 50 dólares).
The speech did not necessarily require a very specific localization process, as the show constantly cites the routines and customs of families in the interior of Georgia, but the translator opted to adapt the original to “It must cost 50 pila”. The simple exchange of “dollars” for “pila” brought a new evaluation to the scene on screen, which positioned the audience as belonging, even without the presence of the word “reais” in the translation.
Globalization and cultural items
According to Aixelá (1996), the cultural asymmetry between two linguistic communities is inevitably reflected in the discourses of their members. When analyzed in perspective, in the face of a wide range of cultural elements capable of challenging or questioning a group’s conceptions of life, translation plays a fundamental role by offering the target audience diverse mediation strategies. These strategies range from conservation, which maintains otherness by reproducing the cultural signs present in the source text, to naturalization, which adapts these signs to the target culture, making the other a familiar cultural representation. The choice between these approaches, along with other factors, highlights both the target audience’s degree of tolerance and their willingness for intercultural solidarity.
There is also, within the context of globalization and the adoption of the English language as the new esperanto, a strong tendency to americanize the narrative, especially in series, to facilitate commercialization in the United States. This process of “americanization” of texts and cultural signs has globally harmed the propagation of works with cultural roots.
In the plot of the translation process of series and film texts, foreignization tends to be more present, while for literary texts, the domestication of translation has more freedom to be explored, as it does not necessarily depend on more arbitrary areas of each linguistic system, such as streets, historical figures, or place names — the expression “arbitrary,” in this case, means that there is no logical or natural relationship between the word and the object it represents. The presence of passages that require explanation due to intercultural differences leads the translator to need to expand their vision.
Strategies
According to Gambier (2009), translation strategies depend on culture, language, and how they can be adapted in translated works. The author defines translation as a “complex linguistic-cultural act of communication, recontextualizing the message within another context” and, faced with the various specific cultural items (CSIs) that need to be addressed, it is common for translators to use different strategies within the same text. The translator can also, according to functionalist theory, resolve translation challenges based on the function of the target text, no longer needing to return to the source text very frequently.
There is not necessarily a right or wrong way to perform a translation. Despite the existence of several strategies and ways to go through the translation process, the cultural recoding is made available from the translator’s own worldview and their vision (sometimes also their client’s).
The translator’s performance, therefore, goes beyond simple linguistic transposition, configuring itself as a constant exercise of cultural mediation and strategic decision-making. In a scenario of increasing globalization, in which cultural exchanges occur in an accelerated and dynamic manner, the professional training of the translator becomes essential so that they can deal with the complexity of discourses and the diversity of cultural elements present in the texts.
Translatorial competence is not restricted to the mastery of the source and target languages, but also involves a deep understanding of cultural nuances, the pragmatic effects of discourse, and the expectations of the target audience. Thus, for the translator to effectively and ethically play their role as a bridge between cultures, careful attention must be paid to the sociocultural transformations that shape global relations.
Translation continues to be a living work that, in the contemporary world, must cease to be known as a simple process resulting from globalization to be regarded as its starting point.
This content was produced by:
Isabela Talita Segredo
Project manager and translator at Skylar, where she performs her role in demands related to the Skylar Business front. She worked as an English language teacher for four years before migrating to the field of translation and subtitling. Her research focus and interest lie in Audiovisual Translation, with special emphasis on dubbing and cultural transposition in extralinguistic aspects.
Who wrote this column
Skylar
