Beneath the veil of speech: on translating Alan Moore’s The Courtyard and Neonomicon

Abstract

This article is a case-study of a rather unique translation problem faced during the translation of Alan Moore’s and Jacen Burrows’s comic book series The Courtyardand Neonomicon from English into Brazilian Portuguese. After a brief exposition of the intertextual aspects relating to Moore’s countless references to Lovecraft in these series, the exploration of language as a major stylistic device is established with reference to Lovecraft’s pseudo-mythology. There follows an in-depth discussion of the translation problems elicited by Moore’s remarkable use of language and meta-language as a plot device. Hofstadter’s concepts of pressure and slippability are introduced and contextualized as a viable approach to the practice of creative translation as defined by Kußmaul (2007). The published translation is presented and analyzed, and a conclusion is drawn with regard to the general practice of literary translation and creative literary translation in particular.