Paratexts as mediators of translations. The case of the preface to a Portuguese version of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe

Abstract

The provision of a translator’s paratext offers greater visibility to the translator and a direct source of information on his/her decisions and intentions. Osório de Oliveira, the translator of the Portuguese version of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, replaces the author’s original preface with one of his own in which he justifies the alterations to the original text, whilst underlining that it was a Portuguese vessel on its way to Brazil which saved the hero from his desperate plight. This paper proposes to examine the reasons for Oliveira’s emphasis on this particular episode, to the detriment of others which were unquestionably more interesting within the context of the hero’s adventures. The date of publication of the translation – 1940 – and consequently of the paratext, provides the principal key to the answer, as the ideology of the Estado Novo was founded on the exaltation of the Portuguese “Discoveries”, underpinning a colonial policy which supposedly justified the retention of the “Overseas Provinces”. The paper discusses the translator’s reasons for intervening in the target text, whilst attempting to evaluate how far the paratext may have mediated the reception of a final version in which the deeds of past heroes were exploited in an attempt to appropriate Defoe’s story.