Beyond Borders and Linguistic-Cultural Divisions: Strategies of Translation and Poetic Transcreation in “Arcas de Babel”

Abstract

The poetry translation section “Arcas de Babel”, published online in Revista Cult and curated by poet-translator Patrícia Lavelle, embraces a series of poetic translations and statements regarding subjectivation processes and historicities related to translation activity. After thoroughly examining the section’s contents, this paper aims to discuss how the practices of both translation and poetic transcreation spread in cyberculture share the desire to unleash the true potential of the original language and to transform the singularities that reside within the target language. It is safe to assume these exchanges are mobilized through operations of reciprocal estrangement, which challenges the limits imposed by territorial and glottopolitical borders between the “self” and the translated “other”, hybridizing both of them. On account of that, twelve translations belonging to twelve different categorical groups were selected for posterior analysis, in order to investigate poetic practices that seek to turn translation activity and digital media into alternative paths to the contemporary Brazilian literary horizon.