O Iraque norte-americano: a tradução para o inglês do romance Frankenstein em Bagdá, de Ahmed Saadawi

Abstract

The subject of our research is the novel بغداد في فرانكشتاين , by the Iraqi Ahmed Saadawi, which still does not have a translation into Portuguese. In particular, we analyze the translation into English, by Jonathan Wright - Frankenstein in Baghdad (2017). The American translator himself recognizes that about 10,000 words were edited from the original text. In addition, he introduced an index with the list of characters in the novel and suppressed the footnotes introduced in the original in Arabic to explain terms from the Iraqi variety of Arabic and to remember the fictional content of the references made in the novel to Iraqi names, activities, events and institutions. The suppression of these linguistic, cultural and political marks from the novel not only facilitates the Anglo-Saxon reader's understanding, as Venuti's concept of the translator's invisibility suggest, but, above all, attenuates its specific roots in contemporary Iraq during the North American occupation.