Anthropophagic Translation: An Analysis of Translation Ethics, and Translation as a Tool for Cultural Reclamation and Power:
Introduction:
The topic of Anthropophagic Translation has continuously dwelt in my mind for the past 3 to 4 months, after I first learnt about the movement in the book ‘Speaking in Tongues’ by J.M. Coetzee and Mariana Dimópulos. Coetzee introduces the Anthropophagy Movement as a plan “...to devour and ingest the culture of the colonising power, and then reconstitute it as a component of indigenous culture.” (p.78)
Using the metaphor of an indigenous cannibalistic ritual to create a new, post-colonial translation theory to reclaim the power of language into the hands of the Brazilians was something deeply riveting to me. Still, for months, I had no idea how to tackle this topic or how to write an article that did not just regurgitate facts and quotes already said by other scholars.
Then, something of an eureka moment struck me over the Easter holidays. I recently visited a Simultaneous Interpreting lab at the Chinese University (I’m going to write a separate piece on this!), and this experience made me realise just how much we rely on the interpreter to create linguistic understanding, and the power they hold as the bridge between the speaker and the audience. This experience prompted my reflection on the numerous decisions one has to consider when translating literary works. The looming question in my mind: ‘What makes a ‘good’ translation?’ enraptured me, and that’s when I knew I had an article idea.
Today’s article will discuss translation ethics, the Anthropophagy Movement and subsequent Anthropophagic Translation, before meshing these together and examining how Anthropophagic Translation subverts traditional translation expectations as an act of defiance against colonial influences in Brazil.
Is the translator a ‘servant’ to the original or a creative taking inspiration?
Arguably, the biggest debate in translation is whether the translator should remain as faithful as possible to the source material or take creative liberties based on the nuances that the translator feels from the text. However, this debate is, as Polizzotti (2018) describes, “...a tough tightrope to walk”. So, to try and decipher what a ‘good’ translation might be, we first need to explore the purpose and aim of translation, as well as what translated versions bring to the original text, to even begin the discussion of which side of this ‘tightrope’ we should walk on.
In my view, translation is an important tool to enable communication and understanding. Translation should not just act as a bridge, but should also facilitate dialogue between cultures as a remedy to the onslaught of homogenisation, where expectations that being the ‘standard’ is the best way to be. Translations should offer us an opportunity to step outside the small bubble we know, into stories, tales and poems that depict a life drastically different from our own, to broaden our worldview and make us more compassionate, open-minded individuals.
Next, I believe it is important to remove the impression of translation as a loss of something from the source material. While it is undeniable that the translation will never convey the same meaning as the original, this should not be treated as a drawback, but rather should be taken into perspective. When reading a translated work, you’re exposed to the tandem minds of two individuals (the author and the translator), a dynamic process that yields new interpretations that might not be exactly the author’s, but are still just as meaningful. Again, Polizzotti (2018) sums it up perfectly when he says “...“At its best, translation exposes us to minds and voices able to stir in us a particular sense of delight or kernel of insight, a shiver of discovery that would be available nowhere else…”
This is why, for me personally, I believe translators should take some creative liberties to give the reader a full reading experience, where the gaps in languages and, hence, gaps in thoughts, are filled in by the translator’s interpretation and knowledge. Our thoughts are limited by the language we speak. Grammatical structures and word choices help us order and express our thoughts, but they also limit us in how and what we communicate. Therefore, it is highly idealistic to expect thoughts in one language to be seamlessly converted into another. I find that the best translations I’ve read don’t feel like a stiff carbon copy of the original text, but a moving, other version that is heavily based on the original, but takes liberties to change the way certain things are expressed by the original author to make the translation smoother and more understandable to the reader of the target language.
With all of this being said, what is the final consensus of what makes a ‘good’ translation? The answer is that there is no answer, and there will never be an answer, or at least not one that is universally applicable for all instances of translation. To me, as long as the translator executes their translation in a way that maintains cross-cultural communication, I see no harm in taking creative liberties, just like how I see no harm in using the most basic translations from the source text.
Polizzotti’s metaphor of the ‘tightrope’ does not just show the fickle nature of translation, but also highlights that one cannot go too strongly on either side (i.e. full creative freedom or hard-lined adherence to the original). As John Dryden put it, a translator “...ought to possess himself entirely and perfectly comprehend the genius and sense of his author.” This can be achieved through a variety of means and even a combination of the two sides of the debate, to create a worthwhile translation.
An Introduction to Anthropophagic Translation:
Moving on to the main subject of this essay, Anthropophagic Translation. To explain Anthropophagic Translation, there first needs to be an introduction to the historical anthropophagy ritual done by the Tupi, and specifically the Tupinambá people of Brazil, and how this influenced Oswald de Andrade’s Anthropophagy Movement.
Historically, anthropophagy or cannibalism was a complex socio-religious ritual done by the Tupinambá people of coastal Brazil. It was done as an act of vengeance through consuming the flesh of enemy tribes and absorbing their spirit. Prisoners of war, before being executed, would be fully integrated into the community for a few months, often given a new name, a home and even a wife. This was to begin the process of converting and consuming the ‘alterity’ or ‘otherness’ of the enemy. Then, the prisoner would be executed, with their body parts cooked or roasted and distributed amongst members of the community, where they would be eaten.
While colonialism has instilled an idea of cannibalism being barbaric or villainous, this ritual holds deep symbolic meaning for the Tupinambá people. They engaged in the cannibalism of their enemies as a way to consume their “Other” spirit, incorporating the strength, power and knowledge of the enemy into the souls of their own tribe and community. This ensures there is a total defeat of the enemy and no chance of revenge from the enemy tribe.
Oswald de Andrade used the metaphor of anthropophagy thousands of years later as one of the pioneers of the Anthropophagy Movement in the 1920s through his book ‘Manifesto antropófago’ (1928). Andrade proposed that the symbolic meaning of devouring and digesting one’s enemy in the historical anthropophagy ritual should be carried into the culture of Brazil, where Brazilians should, instead of passively accepting European and colonialist influences in art, culture and poetry, consume these influences and infuse them into Brazilian made art and culture as “an act of resistance, which veers between insubordinate aggression, respect (after all, cannibals only eat valorous enemies), and irreverence.” (Fernandes, 2019, p.4). Andrade proposed this movement to construct a new Brazilian cultural identity that was entirely one’s own and completely void of external, especially European, influences.
From this came Anthropophagic Translation in the 1950s by Haroldo and Augusto de Campos, two brothers who were themselves poets, literary critics and translators. They developed the metaphor of anthropophagy even further by specifically applying it to the field of translation. From the Anthropophagy Movement, the same ideas applied. Anthropophagic translation meant taking European and other foreign texts and changing them in a way that transcends mere translation of words. It “feeds off the text of the Other, but also one’s own cultural and literary tradition. The familiar is combined with the foreign to the point that it is no longer recognisable.” (Strasser, 2023) Anthropophagic Translation is an act of defiance against the colonial influences that have repressed and stolen Brazilian identity from Brazilians, done to defend the ownership of an art and culture that is inherently theirs.
For some key examples of Anthropophagic Translation, we can look at Campos’ translation of Homer’s Iliad (1990-2007), which was initially heavily criticised by Brazilian scholars of Greek due to its lack of adherence to the original Homeric poem. However, it was pointed out by some, including Robert de Brose (2017) (as cited in Schiess, 2022, p.88), that Campos translated not just the words, but the ‘music’ of the text, where he chose to translate based on the structure and rhythm of Portuguese, so that readers could understand the source text more clearly. As Schiess (2022, p.88) puts it: “This kind of a ‘cannibal translation’ produces a different kind of ‘fidelity’ to the original: an attempt to recreate the elements that would ‘remain obscure’ to the reader ‘unversed in Greek’...”
Anthropophagic Translation & Traditional Translation Rules:
It is quite obvious that Anthropophagic Translation completely subverts normal translation rules in terms of its explicit creative liberty of consuming the source text to create a translation uniquely Brazilian. However, I’d like to analyse this more deeply to uncover that while the purposes of these two translation theories are very different, there are still some similarities that tie them together.
Firstly, the entire purpose of Anthropophagic Translation is vastly different to normal Translation rules. Anthropophagic Translation serves as a biting response to the European and colonial condemnation of indigenous peoples, where translation in the colonial context served as a “significant technology of colonial domination” (Schiess, 2022, p. 76, as cited in Niranjana, 1992, p.21). Its purpose, rather than creating channels for cultural communication and acting as a mediator, is to establish a unique Brazilian culture and act as a form of defiance against systematic oppression. According to Andrade’s Anthropophagic Law, “my way of loving them is to swallow them”. While traditional translation ethics shows ‘love’ for the source text as a respectful interpretation that highlights the work of both the author and the translator, in anthropophagic theory, ‘love’ is seen through the consumption and integration of the source text into what is entirely and wholly Brazilian. This difference highlights how Anthropophagic Translation is not merely a form of translation, but at its core, is a deeply political act to create uniquely Brazilian art.
Now, I would like to further discuss the ‘admiration’ of source texts in both Anthropophagic Translation and traditional Translation ethics, albeit in drastically different ways. In traditional translation, the translator needs to have a deep-rooted care for the piece they are translating to translate it well; this is obvious. In the historical anthropophagic ritual, a high level of respect for the enemy is distinct as well. The ‘you are what you eat’ maxim is threaded throughout this ritual because the Tupinambá people only ate those they found to be worthy enemies, so that they could absorb their spirits to strengthen their own. The same maxim can be seen in Anthropophagic translation metaphorically, where the consumption of the ‘enemy’s’ work is because “...you only devour what you love.” (Strasser, 2023). Anthropophagic Translation, with its radical and unyielding method of showing admiration for the source text, differs hugely from the typical admiration shown in traditional translation theories, but it cannot be ignored that this similarity exists between these two seemingly exceptionally different types of translation.
Therefore, as a translation theory, Anthropophagic Translation is much more radical than traditional Translation ethics and, as a result, is vastly different in terms of its purpose and how it shows its admiration for the source text. These differences do not make one better than the other in any way, but are great to use in this discussion of how mere words on a page are powerful and intrinsically political.
Concluding Comments:
While some scholars argue that the Western world overestimates the legitimate impact of Anthropophagic Translation in the Brazilian translation scene, it is undeniable that the translation theory and the whole Anthropophagy Movement have made a name for themselves and have impacted the country culturally and socially. From a socio-religious ritual to a powerful movement to a revolutionary translation theory, the idea of anthropophagy as an act of power, and protection of what is intrinsically Brazilian, remains strong, even as time beats down memories of history and colonialism sought to ‘civilise’ indigenous influences in Latin America. One word, one phrase and one sentence at a time, Brazilian identity is restored, protected and respected through the ideas that Anthropophagic Translation gave us.
Bibliography:
Bachner, A. (2017). Cannibal Translations: Cultural Identity and Alterity in Early Modern China and Latin America. Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, 17(2), 146–174. https://www.jstor.org/stable/90018089
Coetzee, J. M., & Dimópulos, M. (2025). Speaking in Tongues. Liveright Publishing.
Fernandes, F. S. (2019). ANTROPOFAGIA, BRASILIDADE AND TRANSLATION IN RECENT INTERNATIONAL SCHOLARSHIP. https://sbps.spanport.ucsb.edu/sites/default/files/sitefiles/09_Fernandes.pdf
Polizzotti, M. (2018). Is the translator a servant of the text or an original artist? | Aeon Essays. Aeon. https://aeon.co/essays/is-the-translator-a-servant-of-the-text-or-an-original-artist
Schiess, A. (2022). Haroldo de Campos, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, and the Echoes of Antropofagia. Portuguese Studies, 38(2), 74–89. JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.2307/48814723
Strasser, M. (2023). TOLEDO — TALKS — Anthropophagic Translation or Towards a Poetics of Assimilation. Toledo-Programm.de. https://www.toledo-programm.de/talks/6103/anthropophagic-translation-or-towards-a-poetics-of-assimilation
**The article ‘Cannibals in Translation (Studies): Haroldo de Campos, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, and the Echoes of Antropofagia’ by Amy Schiess is especially interesting if you’d like to read more about this topic!!
