ABSTRACT
“Ontological narratives are personal stories that we tell ourselves about our place in the world and our own personal history”. This definition, among the four types of narratives presented by Mona Baker (2006)BAKER, Mona. (2006). Translation and conflict, a narrative account. London and New York: Routledge., is the one she brings to translation studies, along with other concepts developed mainly in sociology. The author proposes socionarrative as a process encompassing several texts and enabling the narrator-translator to take a stand when faced with conflicting situations whose narratives are reproduced or built by means of translation and interpretation. After discussing the presence of affects and emotions in translation practice, we present an ontological narrative of an experience lived by one of the authors, which was, in a first moment, interpreted by herself as a reaction at the level of ethics and rationality, and that came to be ressignified, after a questioning from one examiner of the committee who discussed her Memorial, about what the author-translator had felt in that situation. With the help of reflections developed in the Human Sciences in general (AHMED 2014AHMED, Sara. (2014). The cultural politics of emotion. 2a. ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.), and in the field of translation in particular (ROBINSON, 1991ROBINSON, Douglas. (1991). The translator´s turn. Baltimore/ London: The Johns Hopkins Press.; 2003ROBINSON, Douglas. (2003). Performative linguistics. Speaking and translating as doing things with words. London/ New York: Routledge.; 2020ROBINSON, Douglas (2020) Becoming a Translator. 4th ed. London and New York: Routledge.), the main objective of this article is to discuss the reactions of the translator and of some readers of the translated text, as well as their possible impacts on the conceptual narratives about translation.
Keywords:
translation and affects; ontological narrative; reason versus emotion in the Human Sciences