Of Doubles and Exchanges: About the Translation of Marubo Chants from Portuguese into Spanish

Abstract

This article proposes a poetic analysis of the translations of various fragments taken from Marubo chants. The songs analyzed are the following: Raptada por el rayo (kaná kawã), Payé Flor de Tabaco (Rome owe romeya) and Origen de la Vida Breve (Roka), originally collected and translated by the Brazilian anthropologist Pedro Niemeyer Cesarino in his text Quando a terra deixou de falar: cantos da mitología marubo (2013). The purpose is to analyze translation images present in the chants, for example: the contact with distant voices to which the shamans attempt to answer in Raptada por el rayo; the “exchange of eyes” as a reminder of the shaman as singer and double in Payé Flor de Tabaco; and the image of the song of brevity which reminds us that translation is a variation among variations, always fragmentary and provisional in Origen de la Vida Breve. These images will allow us to point out the contributions of Marubo shamanic poetics to reflect upon the act of translation.

Keywords

• cantos marubo
• poética
• traducción literaria