Tradutores acidentais, tradutores sobreviventes: dois percursos acidentados, em narrativas de Jonathan Safran Foer e Todd Hasak-Lowy

Resumo

 This article analyses two fictional representations of translators-interpreters in conflict situations: Todd Hasak-Lowy’s short story “The Task of This Translator” (2005) and Jonathan Safran Foer’s first novel, Everything Is Illuminated (2002). Very different, namely in their narrative form, these two works come together in the way they use irony to address dramatic subjects: in Safran Foer, young Alex is enrolled as an interpreter for an American who visits Ukraine in search for his roots; in Hasak-Lowy, a desperate Ben accepts a job he has no qualifications for. In both cases, the interpreter ends up playing a crucial role, enabling a mediation that goes far beyond a strictly linguistic framework. Resorting to theoretical works such as those of Delabastita and Grutman (2005), Kaindl and Spitzl (2014), or Arrojo (2018), on the fictional representation of translators, Baker (2006) on translation and conflict, and Boase-Beier et al. (2017), specifically on matters concerning translation and memory, we analyse comparatively these two portrayals, paying close attention to issues relating to the ethics of mediation.