Translation, Resistance, Activism

The Resistant Political Translations of Monteiro Lobato

190 In this article I examine the translations and adaptations of José Bento Monteiro Lobato (1882–1948), a prolific writer of fiction, children’s books, and treatises, most of which focus on bringing a more forwardlooking mentality to Brazil. As a publisher initially with Monteiro Lobato e Cia. and then with Companhia Editora Nacional, Monteiro Lobato was also a key figure in the development of the Brazilian publishing industry. He was the first publisher in Brazil who attempted to develop a mass market for books and to turn the book industry into a consumer industry. Until Monteiro Lobato most publishing was in the hands of Portuguese or French-owned companies, and the target market was very much that of the Francophile middle-class elite. Monteiro Lobato used his translations, retellings, and writing, as well as his work as a publisher, to advance his political views and criticisms of the government (1930–45) of the populist dictator of Brazil, Getúlio Vargas (1882–1954), and to shift power structures . Monteiro Lobato’s domesticating strategies and his complex manipulation of the place of enunciation in his writing and his translations alike combined with his contemporary colloquial Brazilian Portuguese to create effective tools of political resistance. Monteiro Lobato’s initial success as a writer was with Urupês (1918), stories about rural life inspired by his experience as a farm owner near São Paulo, which featured Jeca Tatu, an indolent yokel, who for Monteiro Lobato represents rural backwardness and ignorance. This book was followed by his first collection of children’s stories, A menina do narizinho arrebitado (The JOHN MILTON The Resistant Political Translations of Monteiro Lobato The Resistant Political Translations of Monteiro Lobato 191 Girl with the Turned-up Nose, 1921), in which he introduced his cast of children and dolls at the Sítio do Picapau Amarelo (Yellow Woodpecker Farm). The success of both books was phenomenal and in many ways started the book industry in Brazil.1 By 1920 more than half of all the literary works published in Brazil were published by Monteiro Lobato e Cia., and in 1941 a quarter of all books published in Brazil were produced by Monteiro Lobato’s Companhia Editora Nacional (Koshiyama 1982:133).2 Monteiro Lobato believed that a growing book industry would significantly aid the development of Brazil; he proclaimed, “Um país se faz com homens e livros” (A country is made by people and books; qtd. in Koshiyama 1982:99).3 He believed that people act responsibly in virtue of knowing the human experience of other people; such knowledge is found in various forms of communication, especially books, and results in action. Despite his exaltation about books, Monteiro Lobato had a hardheaded attitude toward selling them. He saw books as commercial objects that could be sold just as other goods were, at a variety of sales outlets: “livro não é género de primeira necessidade . . . é sobremesa: tem que ser posto embaixo do nariz do freguês, para provocar-lhe a gulodice” (books are not staples of the diet . . . they are desserts: they must be put under the nose of the customer to excite his sweet tooth; qtd. in Koshiyama 1982:72). He managed to increase the points of sale for his works from 40, the total number of bookshops in Brazil when he began publishing, to 1,200, including drugstores and newsstands (Hallewell 1985:245). He was also innovative in terms of the visual presentation of books, becoming responsible for more attractive covers than the featureless yellow ones that followed French fashion. Monteiro Lobato stressed the importance that Brazil should give to its own culture, consistently opposing dominant Francophile tendencies that copied the latest Parisian fashions in art, music, and literature. He wanted to open Brazil outward to German, Russian, Scandinavian, and AngloAmerican literature. Accordingly, he became a prolific translator, adapting such works as Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, Robinson Crusoe, Tom Sawyer , Huckleberry Finn, and Gulliver’s Travels. Monteiro Lobato’s Companhia Editora Nacional opened in 1925 after the bankruptcy of Monteiro Lobato e Cia., which over-invested in printing presses. This second publishing house issued works by Conan Doyle, Eleanor H. Porter, Ernest Hemingway, H. G. Wells, Herman Melville, Jack London, John Steinbeck, and Rudyard Kipling. Thus Monteiro Lobato helped initiate a movement toward the importation 192 John Milton of works written originally in English, that continued right up to World War II, when English...