Boris Schnaiderman and translation’s self-comment

Abstract

Boris Schnaiderman distinguishes himself for having a peculiar method of doing and editing translations. He used to ask someone to read aloud his translations while he checked the original. For every translation he used to read the whole work of the author as well as the critical works related to it, Russian and foreign. This was the basis of the paratext (forewords, afterwords, footnotes) which accompanied his translations. He employed the same method at every new edition of the translations, when he updated the bibliography concerning the author and his work and made changes in the paratext. He employed the same method every time his translations had a new edition. In his paratexts he examined different aspects of the author and his work, expressing personal views which were often against the received consensus, as when he stressed the relevance of part of Maxim Gorky’s work in a time where Gorky was largely seen as a second rate author. Schnaiderman, whenever possible, was able to link the translated author and text with Brazilian culture, and as a result he was able to have a dialogue with leading figures such as Dalton Trevisan and Rubem Fonseca about authors they considered important to their work, like Anton Chekhov and Isaac Babel. All these features make Schnaiderman’s translations and paratexts a rich corpus for researchers, among others, in the fields of Translation Studies, Russian Studies, Brazilian Literature, Comparative Literature and Literary Studies.