BLACK WOMEN IN SOUTH AFRICA POST APARTHEID: TRANSLATION OF THE FIRST ACT OF OUR LADY OF BENONI
Black Theatre. Afrodiasporic translation. South Africa.
The present work emerges from a context of transatlantic ''escrevivências'', in a three-dimensional perspective, linked to the multicultural interactions in the journeys made by Brazil, the United States of America, and South Africa. It is a research that stems from an afrodiasporic approach in the field of Literature and Culture Studies, focusing on the Contemporary Translation Studies, constituted from an ethics, aesthetics, and politics of the Global South. Thus, in addition to theoretical debates, mainly on South African Black Theater, an afrodiasporic and annotated translation of the first act of the English-language drama "Our Lady of Benoni" by South African author Zakes Mda was carried out. The drama addresses comprehensive issues of gender, taboos, prejudices, racial relations, and cultural traits of the interaction between virginity and patriarchy through tests practiced on women and girls from some ethnic groups in post-Apartheid South Africa. The translation was done into Brazilian Portuguese, through analyses of the cultural elements of the original dramatic text, seeking indices that resonate with the Black diaspora, especially Afro-Brazilian. Both the theoretical analyses and the translation took into consideration issues of race, class, gender, and cultural conflicts to understand the relevant developments of translational gestures in the context of an involved handling that observes the importance of the "translator's body" as a fundamental element in the interlingual and cultural translation process of a work. To achieve this, the theoretical-methodological support used was the concept of ''Tradução como Performance Escrevivente'' coined by Luciana Reis (2017).