An experience with the translation of the book of essays A Europa Desencantada Para uma Mitologia Eropeia by Eduardo Lourenço

IberoSlavica_Anamarija Marinović (CLEPUL; CompaRes)

IberoSlavica_Anamarija_Marinovic_blinded

Abstract

One of the purposes of this article is to expose somedifficulties and challenges that I had with the translationof Eduardo Lourenço’s book of essays A Europa Desencantada, Parauma Mitologia Europeia from Portuguese into Serbian. This bookwas presented at the 56th International Book Fairs inBelgrade, where the Portuguese language was the honorableguest. Now, when Serbia tries to get the status ofcandidate for the membership in the European Union, theconstruction of a common European mythology and identity isa very interesting and important topic. we will analyze thesemantic and syntactic problems in the translation of thisbook as well as some topics from the point of view of itscontents (cultural references)

Keywords: translation from Portuguese into Serbian, AEuropa Desencantada, Eduardo Lourenço, political essays,philosophical terms

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Introduction:

One of the purposes of this paper is to present and

discuss some difficulties ad challenges that the

understanding and translation of the collection of essays

entitled A Europa Desencantada Para uma mitologia europeia written

by the Professor Eduardo Lorenço brought to us as a reader

and as a translator. It was translated from Portuguese

into Serbian within the participation of the Portuguese

language as a honorable guest at the 56th International

Book Fair in Belgrade, that took place in October of 2011.

The importance of this book is multiple: at first this is

one of the greatest works of this author in the category of

political and philosophical essays, in which some of the

texts are about the situation in the Balkans and in Serbia

on its way of European integrations. Other reasons that we

could point out in the analysis of the significance o this

book are the questioning of the European identity, European

Dream, and the mythological and cultural common bases of

one European imagery. The interest that this Lourenço’s

work may cause among the Serbian readers is also multiple:2

it may be read by the Diplomats and the politicians, the

researchers and journalists ad by everyone who wants o

deepen his knowledge about Europe, European Union, the

globalization, European identity, the Otherness, the

difference and many other questions of crucial importance

for postmodern societies. The book can be read also by the

students of the course of Portuguese Language and Culture

at the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade who want to know

more about Portuguese contemporary culture and who would

like to discover how Serbia, the Balkans and our cultures,

identities and certain political problems are seen abroad

from the perspective of a foreign writer. We have to

mention that our feeling of responsibility as a translator

was huge, not only because of some problems that the

language and the very specific terminology would have

presented to us, but also because we know that the author

has been distinguished with many literary awards, and that

the last of them was the Award Pessoa (Prémio Pessoa) that

is given yearly to the most eminent Portuguese

intellectuals. Having into account the fact that Eduardo

Lourenço is considered one of the most respectable

Portuguese essayist and philosophers and that this was my

first translation from Portuguese into Serbian, I must say

that I had a great challenge and some big difficulties in

front of mine.

This article will expose some of the ‘technical’

(linguistic and cultural) problems that the translation of

this book had to resolve, and also some of the difficulties

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that came from not being sufficiently acquainted with the

context where determined expressions were created, some

personalities from Portuguese and world political scene and

so on. We will draw the readers’ attention to some

ambiguous words, such as the adjective desencantada that

appears in the title of the book and in the title of one of

the essays. This particular word can mean ‘disappointed’ as

well as ‘found’. As the book questions some disadvantages

of forming part of the European Union and describes some

difficulties and disappointments that the citizens of some

particular European countries had to deal with, the word

‘disappointed’ in the title seems to be adequate. as it

also points out a scope of European common values,

strategies that some countries must apply to become members

of the Community and reveals the author’s sincere

conviction that Europe must remain together, and observes a

creation of an ‘European mythology, the option ‘found

Europe’ would also be adequate. Our idea was to implement

the first option in the title of the book, since the title

of one of the essays composing it is “The disappointed

Europe or the end of an European dream”. In that essay are

observed topics such as the end of the ‘cold war’, the

disintegration of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin

wall and the confusion of some powerful European countries

such as Germany and France that had to deal with the new

political, economical and cultural situation in Europe. As

all these events provoked great changes on the European

geographical and also ‘mental’ map, and introduced a

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feeling of insecurity in Europe and that was one of the

main reasons for many people to start doubting in the dream

of a united Europe. That is why we translated the

Portuguese word desencantada with the Serbian adjective

razočarana.

Another difficulty that will be analyzed here is the

translation of proverbs, quotations and verses that appear

either in the body of the text, or as incipit of each

chapter. The last problem we would like to point out is the

translation into Serbian of some words and terms that

originally were written in French or German, that are

languages that I am not acquainted with, as well as the

specific terminology that concerns politics, philosophy or

postmodern societies’ structure and problems, which are the

areas that I am not a specialist in.

As the last problem that we had with the translation

of this book, that can also be applied to the translation

of any other kind of books from Portuguese into Serbian and

vice versa is the lack of good and complete bilingual

dictionaries, that could be very helpful and useful in the

process of translation. The bilingual Portuguese and

Serbian dictionary we used in this process is one compiled

by Joana Câmara and Mladen Ćirić (2009) that helped us very

much. The only problem with this dictionary was its pocket

format and its orientation to a more general public and

obviously, in that dictionary there were no specific

philosophical or scientific terms with all their

connotations. This occurred because the Portuguese and5

Lusophone studies are not developed enough in Serbia, but

in close future we hope that some more efforts in

lexicographical or translation work will be done in order

to improve the studies, the researches and the

intercultural dialogue between Portugal and Serbia. Without

having a proper Portuguese-Serbian dictionary, we were

obliged to use monolingual Portuguese dictionaries (as well

as the dictionaries of synonyms an antonyms), that

explained the words that we could not find directly

translated into Serbian, and sometimes we also used

Portuguese-English or English-Serbian Dictionaries. In this

process we also used the help of the groups and Internet

forums such as proz . As the last alternative we recurred

to the Google translator, but it was only to confirm that

some of the words were not exactly the same as we thought

in the beginning.

Some words on the process of translation itself and onthe process of translation of scientific (particularlyphilosophical texts)

In this part of our paper we will expose some of

merely theoretical problems in the process of translation

itself, as it is never only linguistic, work, but also

intercultural and interdisciplinary. When it is talked

about the translation, there is a general opinion that the

so-called ‘literary’ translation gives more freedom to the

translators, that it is more creative but at the same time

more difficult because of multiple meanings of one word,

some of them can be emotionally conditioned. Some of the

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difficulties in literary translation are the specific

social and cultural contexts in which a term is applied.

The so-called ‘technical translation’ seems to be more

specific, more precise and apparently is free of any kind

of ‘deliberate interpretations’ by the translator. This

affirmation could be considered correct in the scientific

texts hat deal with chemistry, physics, biology and some

other ‘exact sciences’. In the humanities texts that deal

with the terminology such as ‘identity’, ‘stereotype’,

‘globalization’ and other concepts that are inevitable in

post-modern approaches to philosophy and language, some

‘misunderstandings’ between the intention that the author

of the original text had and the interpretation that the

translator could make of the text during the process of

translation.

Jeremy Munday (2005) considers that independently from

the type of text to be translated, the translator must pay

attention to the referential meaning and the supplementary

meanings (the denotation and the connotations) of the

words, and that the translation requires a great work of

research so as to overlap the cultural and social

differences between the original language and culture and

the language and culture into which the text is translated.

Commenting this affirmation we can agree that on the choice

of words made by the author depends the variability of

interpretative possibilities and the probable confusions in

the understanding and translating. Some of those mistakes

in translations surge due to the transference that the

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translator may have from its mother language or from

another foreign languages (from the same group as the

language of the original texts or not) that the translator

uses. The transferences can be results of mere substitutes

of a word by its equivalent in another language, that

sometimes must be a ‘false fiend’. It may happen that the

translator tries to ‘copy’ the structure of the sentence

from his own language into the target language, and then we

can say that what is in question is a ‘calc’, the literal

translation of terms that originally did not have any kind

of relation one with another. Eugene Nida (2012) as the

main motifs for the transference between two languages are

the excessive knowledge of a topic (when the translator

thinks that he has the right to complete the original

information, or the idea that the translator may have of

his public and their level of domain of the theme. The

translator, who is an expert in a determined thematic.

One of the consequences of translator’s excessive

knowledge of atopic can be His wish to show his erudition

fulfilling the text with footnotes an additional

explanations that are not extremely necessary for the

comprehension of the text itself. Another disadvantage of

this kind of translator’s knowledge and competences is to

translate the original text in a very ‘elevated’ style,

thinking that all of the readers of the text have the same

level of acquaintance with the item as he does. The

completely opposite problem to this one is not being

acquainted at all with the matter of the original text and

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trying to understand it in the translator’s own way without

making any effort to do the research about the subject of

the document to be translated.

The problems with the translation can appear also when

the translator is not sure about his own language (whether

an idiom, phrasal verb, prepositional locution or fixed

expression used in the language in which the original text

is translated may exist in his own language, and then the

tendency is to translate literally ‘word by word’ and the

result is that the translated expression cannot sound

properly to the native speakers of the target language.

One of our particular problems during the translation

of the book A Europa Desencantada Para uma mitologia europeia was

that we were not familiarized enough with the political and

philosophical writings of this author, having read before

only his literary critics and essays on Portuguese culture

in general, and later on we will discuss some of particular

examples that we considered difficult or specific for

translation.

Difficulties in the process of translation of the book A

Europa Desencantada from semantic and syntactic point of view

The first issue we have to point out is that the first

reading of the book A Europa Desencantada written by Eduardo

Lourenço is that its language was very dens, complex and

rich, and that the mere experience as a reader made us

learn many new words or their uses in the contexts

different from the one we were used to find and recognize

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in the everyday communication. We also noticed that

Lourenço had a tendency of using some “tricky” words that

have the same etymological origin in the same sentence so

as to make a “word game”, that the translator must

recognize. Another characteristics of Lourenço’s writing

are the use of proverbs, literary quotations, expressions

in English, French, German or Latin, as well as the use of

some Portuguese idioms and popular expressions, with which

the author showed his excellent domain of his mother

language and the vast culture and knowledge not only of

literature, but also of philosophy, politics, religions,

and many other sciences.

Apart from many new vocabulary, we have already

pointed out our difficulty with the understanding and

translating the title of the book and we tried to justify

our option. In the subtitle we had a small problem as well,

since in Portuguese it is “Para uma mitologia europeia”

which could perfectly be translated into English as “ For

an European Mythology”. If we translated it into Serbian

literally as “ Za jednu evropsku mitologiju” it would sound

incomplete and even in contradiction with the translation

of the title. If the Europe Lourenço is writing about is

razočarana (disappointed) as it is referred in the Serbian

translation, what the sense does it make to construct an

European mythology? Trying to conciliate the two Lourenço’s

main ideas expressed in the title and the subtitle of the

book ( the questioning of a common European dream and in

spite of all the doubts, difficulties and troubles that

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being a European can mean, insisting on making an European

identity based on a common mythology) we translated the

title as “Razočarana Evropa” and the subtitle as “Prilozi

za jednu evrpsku mitologiju” which means “Appendixes for an

European mythology”. This way Europe can be disappointed,

but still conserves an idea of common bases, roots, values

and beliefs that can give enough material for a common

mythology. In the preface to the first edition of the

book Eduardo Lourenço exposed his hesitations about the

title and the subtitle starting with the original title of

the French edition L’Europe Introuvable (the Unfindable

Europe), and discussing some other options as “Disoriented

Europe”, “Agonizing Europe” until he finally found the

right title “ The Disappointed Europe” as the most

appropriate to the new political, economical, geostrategic

and cultural situation Europe is facing now, but it still

preserves the possibility of the future of an “European

dream” that the author of the book considers “more

imperative than ever”, so all those reasons seem sufficient

to us to justify the translation of the title and the

subtitle of this book into Serbian as it was done.

Among other difficulties and challenges that the text

of the work A Europa Desencantada” put in front of us were

some lexical issues we will expose and discuss now: When

Eduardo Lourenço wrote about the problematic related to the

Golf War, (Lourenço, 2005) he used the expression: “a

evitável, mas não evitada catastrophe chamada a “Guerra do

Golfo” (the evitable, but not avoided catastrophe called

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“The Golf War), In Serbian we can use the adjective

neizbežan to say “inevitable”, but, we do not use any kind of

adjective to say “ evitable”, so we had to use another

grammatical construction “katastrofu koja se mogla izbeći , ali koja

nije bila izbegnuta zvanu rat u Zalivu”..This way we preserved the

root of the words by using two different forms of the verb

“izbeći” ( to avoid) and preserved the idea of what

Lourenço wanted to say. Another example of this kind is the

syntagma “ a cultura universalizante”, that we translated

as “kultura koja pretenduje da bude univerzalna” (the

culture that pretends to be universal”, because if we tried

to translate “univerzalizujuća kultura”, it would sound

very artificial and intellectualizing in Serbian.

Another linguistic problem that we had in the process

of translating of this book was the Portuguese word

“recalcado” in the context of the title of the essay “O

triunfo do recalcado ou a morte do olhar occidental”, This

word is ‘problematic’ because in Portuguese it means

“copied many times”, “repeated until the exhaustion” or as

one of the last meanings we could also find “repressed”.

Another difficulty in this context is the form of adjective

used as a noun that is underlined by the usage of the

definite article “o” and that means “all that is calqued”.

We opted for the translation “Pobeda potisnutog ili smrt

zapadnjačkog pogleda”, chosing the word “repressed” among

all the possible meanings of this word, because the essay

itself refers several historical and political events that

were very traumatic for Europe and the Europeans, and that,

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n spite of being repeated, are not very pleasant to be

remembered and that the Europeans would like to forget (the

revolution of ’68 that revealed the situation of the

consume society, the “narcism” of the Western European

civilization in the decade of 70s, Marxist ideology, wars

in Vietnam, Cambodia, China, Eritrea , Gulags etc. that the

Europeans are ashamed of). This is why we chose the

adjective “potisnuto” (repressed) in its neutral forms (as

it is known the Slavic languages have three categories of

expressing the gender of nouns and adjectives: the male,

the female and the neutral), to express the idea of

nominalization used in Portuguese with the form of the

article. The Serbian language does not have articles as

grammatical category and in the context when we want to say

“all that possesses some characteristics”, we normally use

the neutral form of the adjective.

Another linguistic problem we had is with the

translation of the Portuguese word “imaginário” in the

context of the title of the essay “A Europa no imaginário

português”. This noun can be translated into English as

“imagery”, but there is not an absolute equivalent of this

term n Serbian, so we decided to translate this title as “

Evropa u viđenju Prtugalaca” (Europe in the vision of the

Portuguese), because the imagery is not anything else than

the system of images you have of something or the form you

see or imagine a phenomenon, a group of people etc. This

word, repeated many times in the text of the essay was

translated in various forms as “viđenje” (vision),

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“sistem / svet slika” (system/world of images”, predstava”

(image), “način na koji Portugalci zamišljaju Evropu” (the

way the Portuguese imagine Europe) and others depending on

the context and on the main idea and message that Lourenço

wanted to transmit. All of these options are legitimate to

be used, once the absolute synonym in Serbian does not

exist, and all of these words have a component of “seeing”

and “imagining”.

The last topic we will mention in this part of our

research is the frequency of the usage of English, Latin,

German or French terms used in the originally Portuguese

text. Most of them were used not just to show the author’s

culture and knowledge, but with a determined intention.

When Eduardo Lourenço spoke about the globalization and

referred to the uniformiization of cultures under the

influence of the United States , he used the sintagma

“world culture” although it was absolutely possible to have

used the Portuguese term “ a cultura mundial”. He

preferred the English expression because the Portuguese one

would not have the same ironical impact that the

overvaluation of the American culture in the world has. As

translator, we opted for leaving the English words that

were explained in a footnote, so we underlined the ironical

attitude that the author showed concerning globalization as

a worldwide phenomenon. When the author used the French

term “par excellence” instead of its Portuguese equivalent

“por excelência” we intuitively knew that his intention was

to refer to some sophisticated aspects of French culture.

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In these cases, as the Serbian public is very acquainted

with the meaning of the French expression, because it is

used very often in the intellectual circles, we did not

need to put an explanatory footnote.. In the cases of other

foreign expressions such as Real Politik, fait-divers, à la

sauvette, part entire etc, we had some difficulties in the

translation, because we do not know neither German nor

French languages. Although the knowledge of some other

Romanic languages allows us to understand the meaning of a

text written in French we could not put the footnotes with

our translation, because some of the words in French could

be “false friends” with their Portuguese phonetic

equivalents. The solutions we used in these cases were the

internet dictionaries or on-line forums of translators that

do know French, and finally, when the translation was done,

we asked the colleague proofreader to verify the precision

of the text translated.

When Lourenço quoted Ibsen’s, Éluard’s, Celine’s

works, we tried to find the official translations of them

into Serbian, and we explained in a footnote that the

translation of that particular phrase or paragraph was not

ours, referring the edition of the work that we used. The

only case we had to give our translation of a paragraph of

a very well known book was the quotation of the Book of Job

from the Bible, since in the existing Serbian translation

of the Old Testament, made by Đura Daničić, we could not

recognize the part referred by Eduardo Lourenço.

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In the case of Latin words and expressions, such as

status quo, inter pares, qui pro quo, we left them in their

original form, because they are very common and used in

the media, in the juridical texts, philosophical and

political writings and there was no need to translate them

into Serbian. There were two or three Latin words that we

thought that they should be translated in a footnote, but

it was just because their forms are not familiar to an

average Serbian reader without any knowledge of Latin. In

the Portuguese text it was easy to recognize the foreign

words because they are always written in cursive letters.

Some of them such as handicap, hippie and others are already

accepted in the Serbian language and all we should do in

these cases is to transliterate them into Serbian alphabet.

One of the challenges of the translation of this book

was the translation of proverbs, proverbial expressions and

idioms. When in Portuguese and in Serbian existed an

equivalent proverb, it was natural to translate the

expression with the same construction as in the cas of

“escolher o largo” translated as “izvući deblji kraj”. When

it was not possible, we tried to find or a similar

expression and complete the information in a footnote, or

to explain the proverb with our own words, when there was

no possibility of finding a synonym or another expression

that would fit perfectly in the context of the book and its

translation. Such is the example of the proverbial

expression “prso por ter cão e preso por não o ter” (in:

Lourenço, 2005:76), that is qualified by Lourenço as “o

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nosso saboroso provérbio” (“our delicious proverb” that in

Serbian translation sounds like this: (Lorenso,2011:80)

“obrni-okreni-kriv si” and it is accompanied by an

appropriate explanation in the footnote. This expression in

Srbian is not a proverb, but it is very frequently used,

and because of its structure and meaning, it has a

proverbial character. Another case of challenge for the

translator is the parody of a proverb “Amigos, amigos,

negócios à parte”, (friends are friends, and work is

something else) that in the author’s version sounds like

“negócios, negócios, cultura à parte”, (works are works, an

culture is something else) that was translated into Serbian

like (Lorenso, op.cit.81): “poslovi su jedno a kultura je

drugo”. In Serbian we have the equivalent proverb for

“amigos, amigos, negócios à parte” that is “ Služba je

služba, a družba je družba”, being the word “služba” that

literally means “service” used in this context just to

rhyme with “družba” (company, friendship). We decided to

paraphrase the expression and not to translate it as a

proverb, because in the context of the defense of national

identities and cultures, the proverb would not fit properly

and would not transmit the exact idea of differentiation

between works and culture as two completely separated units

On the syntactic level, we had to deal with some

difficulties, because Eduardo Lourenço frequently uses very

long and complex sentences, with many subordinate phrases,

interposed elements, explicative words, with many commas

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and other signs of punctuation, that may make the reading

of the text even more difficult.

We will quote and analyze a paragraph chosen by chance so

as to show Lourenço’s style and some difficulties it

presented to us as translator :

Com efeito, e se exceptuarmos a cultura inglesa ( ooutro pólo do diálogo intra-europeu clássico, todas asgrandes culturas europeias, e depois as não europeias-culturas historicamente “religiosas”, ou não laicas, porcontraste com a da França, onde mesmo Pascal, Bousset ouChateubriand são “laicos”-mediram sempre, até temposrecentes, aquilo que era “europeu”- em sentido positivoou negativo - através da mediação explícita ou implícitado “modelo francês”(Lourenço, op.cit.21).

Translated into Serbian, this paragraph sounds like this:

Zapravo, i ako izuzmemo englesku kulturu (drugi polklasičnog unutarevropskog dijaloga), sve velikeevropske, a potom i neevropske kulture, kultureistorijski “religiozne” nasuprot Francuskoj, gde su čaki Bosue ili Šatobrijan “laici”-merile su uvek, doskora,kao u ogledalu, ono što je bilo evropsko, u pozitivnomili negativnom smislu- izričitom ili skrivenom merom“francuskog modela.”

(Lorenso, op.cit. 23).

This sentence, that is really a paragraph was not easy to

translate and in this and many other examples we had to

read it several times so as to understand what the author

pretended to say. After all the readings, we tried to

eliminate the parts of the sentence that were not strictly

necessary for its initial structure, and to translate the

phrase without them and then to put all the elements of the

sentence in the order that is more adequate to the

structure and the order of the words in the Serbian

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language. We must say tjhat the word “culture” in the

context of the European and the Non-European cultures,

referring to the ones that were qualified as “historically

religious”, in the published version was repeated twice,

which was not the case in the translated version, and in

this case it could be only a small typing error or it was

not clear enough to the proofreader which cultures it was

written about. In the first translated version, that we

have in our computer, that part of the sentence sounds:

“sve velike evropske, a potom i neevropske culture, one

koje su istorijski “religiozne”, and instead of repeating

twice the same word, we opted for the variant: “all the

great European and afterwards the Non-European cultures,

those ones that are historically religious”. One another

detail we have to point out in the published version of the

translation of the book is the addition of the syntagma “as

in the mirror” (kao u ogledalu”, in the part of the

sentence that refers to the European and the Non-European

cultures that have always measured the “Europeness” of the

cultures following implicitly or explicitly the French

cultural model. That must have been a deliberate option of

the proofreader who wanted to clarify more the way that

those cultures measured the French influence on them, and

that part does not exist in our original translation The

question that we would like to touch a little bit now is

what is the adequate measure of a proofreader to “correct”

the translator´s options (apart from grammar, style and

sentence structure errors). We think that as well as the

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translator has no right to “correct” or “censure” the

original text author’s thoughts, the proofreader cannot

change the ideas or add words or phrases that do not exist

in the translation, simply because it “looks like better”,

and especially if it has not previously been discussed with

the translator.

Challenges and duties in the process of translation

of the book A Europa Desencantada from the point of view of

its contents

After having considered some of the main obstacles and

challenges in the translation of this book from

grammatical, semantic and syntactic point of view, we will

discuss some of the main aspects that were necessary to

approach from the point of view of the contents of the

book. As it has already been said, we were not completely

familiarized with the political and philosophical thematic

of Lourenço’s work, and this was one of the factors that

made our reading, interpretation and translation of this

collection of essays more difficult. Another aspect that we

would like to point out are the cultural references

/Portuguese and not only), including the mentioning of

concrete and specific personalities wrom the world cultural

and political scene (José Saramago, Lobo Antunes, Eça de

Queirós, Lídia Jorge, Jacques Delors, Robert Schumann,

Francis Fucuyama and events (The Revolution of’ 74, the

demonstrations of 68, perestroika, the bombing of Yugoslavia

in ‘99) or just the allusions to some of them (Maginot

line, the crisis in Poland, the dictator of Bagdad20

(referring to Saddam Hussein). When there was a direct

reference to a concrete person, event or place, it was easy

to complete the information that was omitted in the

original text, because there was no need to explain it to a

Portuguese reader. We needed to put the notes to explain

who were Álvaro Cunhal, Manuel Monteiro, Santana Lopes and

some other Portuguese politicians and we needed to clarify

to Serbian readers why they were important in Portuguese

political scene and why Lourenço mentioned them in that

precise context. It was also necessary to explain what kind

of party was PSD, what it ment “orgulhosamente sós”

(proudly alone) and who used this expression for t he first

time and why the author made this allusion.

If in the Portuguese text was not clearly specified

the event, and it is mentioned only in an allusion (the

crisis in Poland, anti-Yalta, and others), it was more

difficult to explain these facts because it was not clear

enough of which crisis in Poland the author was thinking,

as well as with the example of the “war in Yugoslavia”

because it could be the War that originated the

disintegration of the country in the 90s or the bombing of

the country in 1999.

It is natural that some of the allusions to important

political and cultural events may be more familiar to the

elderly readers that might have accompanied them in a

different way from us that have just read or heard about

them, so for them perhaps there would be no need for any

further explanations, and we were obliged to give the21

information to clarify some of the facts to the younger

public that should be interested in the contents of the

book. We must say that the chapters that analyzed the

situation in Serbia, in the Balkans or that discussed the

independence of Kosovo were relatively easy for us to

translate, because we were familiarized with the situations

that Lourenço described and we were acquainted with the

names that the author mentioned (Tito, Slobodan Milošević,)

and the places he wrote about (Belgrade, Kosovo, Dubrovnik,

Sarajevo). Nevertheless, our responsibility in the

translation of these texts was greater, because it was

supposed that we should interpret correctly some cultural

and mythological implications, some connotations of the

words with which the others describe the Serbian people

etc. Sometimes it was also necessary to use the footnotes,

but not to explain some aspects of the Balkans history,

mentality or identity, but to point out some “foreign”

perspectives of looking at the problematic exposed in the

book.

Conclusions

The translation of any kind o book, article, or text,

literary or scientific, is a process that requires an

adequate preparation and research and it has its own

difficulties and challenges as any other serious work, The

experience with the translation of the book of essays A

Europa Desencantada, Para uma mitologia europeia written by Eduardo

Lourenço was just an example of the process of the

translator’s work, and it was observed from lexical,22

semantic, syntactic point of view as well as from the

perspective of the contebts of the book and some important

cultural and historical references. The book with very deep

and complex ideas, very elaborated language and style, very

dense and complex thoughts, A Europa Desencantada for us

was a real “fire Baptism” since it was our first book to

translate from Portuguese into Serbian, and since the

European thematic are very much discussed in Serbia

because this country is on its way of the European

integrations. The solutions to the translation problems

that we gave were certainly not the only ones or the best

ones, but they can give more material to the future

translators to think about them and to study them.

As the reception of the book by the critics and by the

public in Serbia was very good, we can say that the result

of our work was a great gratifying experience and that we

will continue improving and developing our knowledge of the

Portuguese language in order to improve the interest for

Portuguese language and culture among the Serbian readers.

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References:

Lourenço, Eduardo, 2005, A Europa Desencantada, Para uma mitologia

europeia,Lisboa, Gradiva

Lorenso, Eduardo (2011) Razočarana Evropa, prilozi za jednu evropsku

mitologiju, s postugalskog prevela Anamarija Marinović, Novi

Sad, Mediterran Publishing

Munday, Jeremy,2005, Introducing translation Studies, Theories and

Practices, New York, Routledge Publishers

Nida, Eugene (2012), Sobre La Traducción,Madrid, Gredos

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