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JOÃO FERREIRA DUARTE–REPRESENTING TRANSLATION IN THE COLONIAL ENCOUNTER
REPRESENTING TRANSLATION IN THE COLONIAL ENCOUNTER
191
JOÃO FERREIRA DUARTE
Universidade de Lisboa
The scene of colonization is also the scene of translation.
Eric Cheyfitz, The Poetics of Imperialism
By the signs they made I think they were asking if we came from Heaven. One old man
even climbed into the boat we were towing, and others shouted in loud voices to everyone on the
beach, saying, “Come see the men from Heaven; bring them food and drink.”
1. INTRODUCTION
Columbus, Logbook (14/October/1492)
The historical facts have been told and re-told countless times, so I will restrict
myself here to a brief introductory summary. On 9th March 1500 a fleet of 13 ships under
the command of Pedro Álvares Cabral set sail from Lisbon bound for Asian shores in the
wake of Vasco da Gama’s successful pioneering voyage to India; its avowed purpose, in
addition to the Christianisation of infidels, was the establishment of commerce in highly
profitable goods such as spices, precious stones, and gold. Roughly one month and a half
later, land was sighted, not India, but a portion of the territory that was to become Brazil.
Whether or not this “discovery” was intentional is still a debatable issue in Portuguese and
Brazilian historiography 1 and altogether irrelevant to what this paper sets out to do. More
important in the context is to focus on the personnel carried in the ships: among the
sailors, soldiers, officers, factors, priests, interpreters, etc, we find Pêro Vaz de Caminha, a
nobleman from the city of Oporto who is credited with having written the first page in the
history of Brazil.
I am referring, of course, to the famous “Letter” addressed to King Manuel, which
provides us with a detailed, eye-witness, wonder-filled account of the first contacts with the
native inhabitants of the land, as well as with a description of the fauna and flora, and
invaluable topographical information. The “Letter” was written on site, while events were
taking place, and sent back to the King in the supply ship when the fleet departed to India.
It has been claimed that the document, and indeed the discovery itself, were kept secret for
a whole year for dynastic and political reasons (Couto 1997: 188-90). In fact, the “Letter”
vanished into the royal archives and was published only in 1817; had it been made public at
the time, it certainly would have joined the writings of Columbus, Vespucci, and Anghiera
in (re)presenting before an astonished Europe the picture of a marvellous, uncharted New
World that nobody had ever dreamt of and which would henceforward radically change
not only knowledge of the Real but also the very image Europeans constructed of their
Others.
1 For an up-to-date interpretation that sides squarely with the intentionality thesis, see Jorge Couto. A
expedição cabralina: casualidade versus intencionalidade. Oceanos. 1999, 39 (Julho-Setembro), pp. 18-31.