Angústia and Anguish: social, moral and mental disintegration

Abstract

Resorting to the Descriptive Translation Studies theoretical and methodological tools, the objective of this article is to propose a discussion by comparing Angústia (1941), by Graciliano Ramos, and Anguish (1946), translated into English by Louis C. Kaplan, in order to verify the transformation of the text to adjust it to the North-American literary system. The results show that despite the United States government control of the project, the translation maintained the moral, mental and social disintegration of the protagonist Luís da Silva, strengthening and unfolding this representation in English. To analyze the new textualization, I resort to researches that describe the literary and social conditions that allowed certain works to rise or circulate in specific spaces or periods. Thus, the second movement of this study focuses on the literary and social factors that enabled the circulation of Anguish in the US literary system.