Post-colonial translation, visibility and exoticism: the Brazilian case (original) (raw)

This article draws on the relation between Pos-colonial Studies, Brazilian linguistic formation and the visibility of Brazilian Portuguese in the globalized world. Considering the process of construction of Brazilian society and language, the objective of this paper was to show how the process of mingling and hibridization of several different languages and cultures, resulting from the process of colonization and slavery, generated what we chose to call a new "plural" language. Additionally, this article defends that concepts applied to other former colonies are always applicable to Brazil, due to the peculiar form Brazil developed its relations with its colonizer(s) also developed in a singular ways, which included the temporary transformation of the "colony" in "metropolis". Next, we try to discuss the processes that allowed the empowering of popular language in Brazil and the procedures that might empower Brazilian language in the world. We highlight, in special, the question of nationalism in the first period of Brazilian Modernism and the advent of Oswald de Andrade's ideas of "anthropophagy". We also discuss the use of "code-switching" techniques, as well as of (neo)anthropophagic ones. In order to do that, examples of Brazilian translated literature and of the dissemination of Brazilian popular music using those techniques are displayed.