Translating the universe of Harry Potter into a pluricentric language. How culture influences the translator's choices

Portuguese is the official language in seven countries and is co-official in three more territories. It is also a pluricentric language, given that it has two distinctly codified norms, i.e., two standard varieties – the Brazilian one used in Brazil, and the European one used in the remaining territories. The first translation of the Harry Potter series into Portuguese was published in Portugal in 1999, followed by the translation published in Brazil in 2000. While the language is the same (albeit with two different standards), the choices made by the Portuguese and Brazilian translators differed much more than the grammatical and lexical differences that exist between the two varieties and characterise them as such. Resorting to a comparison of the translation of selected characters' names and neologisms, this paper analyses the choices made by the Portuguese translators (initially one, but ultimately a team that included, at different moments, six translators) and the Brazilian translator (only one and always the same for the seven volumes). The different choices point to two very different translation projects that were grounded on cultural assumptions about the series' readership – since the translation project was defined for the first book, clearly a children's fantasy book, the target-audience was composed of children aged 9-12. Children that age in Brazil are not as familiar with English as Portuguese children, which justifies, to a great extent, the domesticating translation published in Brazil as opposed to the foreignizing one published in Portugal.

葡萄牙语是七个国家的官方语言，同时也是另外三个地区的共同官方语言。其属于多中心语言（pluricentric language），拥有两套经明确编纂的标准变体：分别为巴西境内使用的巴西葡萄牙语，以及其余地区通用的欧洲葡萄牙语。《哈利·波特》系列的首部葡萄牙语译本于1999年在葡萄牙出版，巴西地区译本则于2000年推出。尽管二者同属葡萄牙语体系（仅存在两套不同的标准规范），但葡萄牙与巴西译者的翻译选择差异，远超两种变体本身在语法、词汇层面的固有区别——而这些语法与词汇差异正是区分两类标准变体的核心特征。本文通过对比部分角色姓名与新造词的译法，分析了葡萄牙译者团队（最初为单人译者，后续由6名译者分阶段组成的团队完成全部翻译工作）与巴西译者（全程仅1人负责全部7卷译本）的翻译选择。二者的翻译选择差异，实则体现了两种基于不同读者群体文化认知的翻译项目定位：由于首部译本的定位明确为儿童奇幻文学，目标受众为9至12岁的儿童。巴西9至12岁儿童对英语的熟悉程度不及葡萄牙同龄儿童，这在很大程度上解释了巴西译本采用归化翻译（domesticating translation）策略，而葡萄牙译本采用异化翻译（foreignizing translation）策略的原因。