Abstract:

Abstract Vinicius de Moraes’ musical Orfeu da Conceição. Tragédia carioca em três atos (1954) can be considered both a classic of Brazilian literature and world literature. Vinicius links the Greek myth with Afro- Brazilian culture, musical pieces that became bossa nova classics, and stages a black Orpheus on a favela hill in Rio de Janeiro. The play has been picturized several times but has been hardly translated. This article would like to outline a few challenges for a translation into German. First and foremost, strategies need to be developed for conveying Afro-Brazilian culture. Firstly, the semantic field “favela” and the favela slang will be examined, secondly, the translation of the musical pieces and the semantic field “samba”. It turns out to be useful to leave terms in the original which refer to a specific Brazilian socio-cultural context, for example the diminutive neguinho/neguinha or samba instruments. Another possibility is the adaptation of a term (morro) in German (favela hill) in order to transport the socio-cultural meaning from the source language to the target language. These strategies help to emphasize a specific Brazilian or Afro- Brazilian character of the piece in translation as well. In this context, the paratext has a culture-mediating function.

Keywords: