CONCEITOS DE TRADUÇÃO E CULTURA NA GRAMÁTICA ARTE DA LINGOA DE IAPAM (1604-1608) DO MISSIONÁRIO JESUÍTA PORTUGUÊS JOÃO RODRIGUES

Abstract

This monograph is a case study on concepts of translation and culture in the grammar Arte da Lingoa de Iapam, written by Portuguese Jesuit João Rodrigues (c.1561-1633). This grammar was published in Japan between 1604 and 1608. In two distinct passages of his Arte da Lingoa de Iapam, a comprehensive and detailed grammar of Late Middle Japanese, Rodrigues comments on the challenges involved in translating into Japanese. First, he discusses the fact that the Japanese language did not have such concepts as „God‟, „angels‟, „sin‟, and „cross‟, proposing that they should be assimilated into Japanese as loanwords, with the necessary phonetic adaptations. In a second passage, Rodrigues gives advice on how to translate: „one should not translate word for word nor sentence for sentence; using our metaphors in the Japanese language should also be avoided, because it makes the sentence barbarian and obscure…‟ The analysis was based on the theory of translation elocutiva, which was, according to Furlan (2006), how the translation was conceived in the Renaissance, in the ideas of Burke (2009) and Eco (2003) on cultural translation, and Aixelà (1997) and Assmann (1996) on translation of cultural items and gods, respectively. The results show that while Rodrigues‟ strategies revealed, on the one hand, an assimilative bias (i.e. they meant setting Christianity apart from Japanese religions for conversion purposes), on the other hand, they were in agreement with the general concept of translation held at the time, namely emphasis put on translating the sense rather than the form.