Translation, Authorship and Original: Powers of the Rhizome

Abstract

The polemical clash between the opposing views of Rosemary Arrojo and Paulo Henriques Britto in the field of translation is exemplary in the way in which attempts have been made to subtract translator and translation from subalternity. This dichotomy often leads to the devaluation of one side in order to legitimize the other. Thus, in this article, I aim at an alternative to this situation. In this sense, I begin a reflection based on the experiences of Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Charles Baudelaire and Paulo HenriquesBritto, as poets and translators, seeking to investigate the notion of authorship and discuss what is meant by original and translation. Finally, I try to point out a possible path to avoid binary positions: author versus translator, original versus translation. I propose here to discuss these terms using the concept of rhizome, allocating both the original and the translated text in this unsystematic network of horizontal proliferation, which enables the understanding of non-hierarchical relationships, as well as the inclusion of the sometimes chaotic path of works such as the so-called “classics”.