Brazilian fiction translated in the United States in the 1940s

Abstract

One strategy devised by the US government through the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs was to strengthen its relationship with Latin-American countries during the Second World War (1939-1945) by translating Brazilian literature and exchanging other cultural products. This article aims at analyzing the American literary system of the 1940s into which the Brazilian literature was translated, focusing on aesthetic trends among the public and critics, as well as editorial and commercial standards. I will describe how the translated texts conformed to target system norms and outline the didactic function determined for the Brazilian translations. The theoretical and methodological framework of Descriptive Translation Studies was used to this end.