Abstract:

Abstract The purpose of this article is to draw a profile of a number of women translators of Shakespearean drama into Brazilian Portuguese, a tradition that dates back to 1936, when Berenice Xavier’s translation of The Taming of the Shrew came out. The study is informed by the branch of translation sociology that draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s (1986, 1989, 1996) concepts of habitus, capital, and field, as well as by Andrew Chesterman’s (2009) Translator Studies, a subarea of Translation Studies. Up to the end of 2020, taking into account only whole-text translations deriving from an English source and published in book form, 214 Brazilian Portuguese translations of Shakespeare’s 39 plays have appeared. The translations were made by 39 individual translators, a duo, and a theater company; there are only ten women translators in this group. By jointly examining biographical data, notions of translation and translatory behavior of those women, taking into account the sociocultural background of their work, I intend to highlight their legacy, hoping to be able to contribute to the history of literary translation in Brazil.

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