Challenges to translate: some strategies employed in the translation of “Everything Counts” by Ama Ata Aidoo

Abstract

This article has as main objective to present the translation strategies used to translate the short story “Everything Counts” (1970), which is part of the collection “No sweetness here” by the Gana”s writer Ama Ata Aidoo. The work was carried out by the group “The uses of translation: black feminism and womanism as response to racism”, an university extension project which is developed at State University of Bahia (UNEB) in Seabra. This research has a qualitative nature and was carried out through a bibliographic research, focused on exploring some demands about translation strategies. The intention is to discuss the theories that contributed to this translation practice, namely: the deconstructive perspective, intercultural translation and its possible interactions with post-colonial theory. Theoretical writings of Rosemary Arrojo (1986), Jacques Derrida (2002), Decio Torres (2009), Susan Bassentt (2007), Maria Aparecida Salgueiro (2010), Meire Ivone Silva (2007) were used. This work intends to contribute to studies involving translation and blackness. It was observed that despite a complex task, the translation of texts that belongs to post-colonial literature is a possible task, through of a translating process that realizes the translation not as a simple transfer of meaning between languages, but as a process that examines the culture(s) (the culture of departure and arrival) in the creation of the new text.