João Ferreira Duarte

Ferreira Duarte has conceptualized the phenomenon of non-translation as a zone of silence applied to both textual and cultural transfers, particularly as the result of institutionalized censorship or ideological embargo, and has problematized the binary discourse that has historically supported reflection on translation. He has also brought forward the concept of carnivalized translation, a particular translation type which, similarly to parody, uncrowns the sacred status of the original. More recently, he has been interested in both the metaphorical uses of the concept of translation across disciplinary fields and the concept of cultural translation through which he shares Gideon Toury’s view of translation as a culturally ingrained fact and sees untranslatability as non-translation and thus as a form of translation in itself. His A Cultura entre tradução e etnografia [Culture between translation and ethnography] (2008) is a textbook in Portuguese language that testifies the encounter between Ehnography, Cultural Studies, and Translation Studies by gathering key essays to the understanding of the complexity of the concept and paradigm of cultural translation.

He has played a decisive role in the institutionalization of Translation Studies in the Portuguese academia. In 1989, following the growth of Comparative Studies in Portugal, he set up the first interdepartmental course on Translation Studies at the University of Lisbon, as part of the newly created MA in Comparative Literature. In 2001 he created TradBase, an online database which collects Translation Studies works published both in Portugal and by Portuguese scholars. The aim of this online bibliography was to promote the dialogue between scholars working on translation; in Ferreira Duarte’s words: “I wanted to contribute to the construction of a kind of ‘scientific community’, that is, to help to foster among those who were working on translation a sense of taking part in a collective project which was both national and international”. In 2004, the fourth EST (European Society for Translation Studies) congress was held in Lisbon under the guidance and impulse of Ferreira Duarte, among other scholars.

João Ferreira Duarte graduated in Germanic Philology from the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon in 1971. In the same year he was offered a position as teaching assistant at this institution. In 1986 he completed his PhD in English Literature with a thesis on W. H. Auden. He has taught Literary Theory, English Literature, Comparative Literature, African Post-colonial Literature, and Translation Studies. Ferreira Duarte was founding member of the Portuguese Association for Anglo-American Studies (APEAA), which was created in 1979, as well as the Centre for Comparative Studies, of which he is a member since 1998. Between 1991 and 2010, he directed the post-graduate programme in Comparative Studies, initially under the name of Comparative Literature, offered at the same School of Arts and Humanities. He was also President of the Portuguese Association for Comparative Literature between 2002 and 2007.

Ferreira Duarte has published widely, especially articles in national and international journals, such as The European Journal of English Studies, Norwich Papers: Studies in Literary Translation, Perspectives: Studies in Translatology, or TTR – Traduction, terminologie, rédaction. In addition to his scholarly work, he was active between the 1970s and the 1990s as a translator into Portuguese of both fiction and non-fiction, particularly of essays and interviews to renowned scholars (e.g. Jacques Derrida).

João Ferreira Duarte (born 1947 in Lisbon, Portugal) is full (retired) professor of English and Comparative Literature at the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon (FLUL). He is also a research fellow at the Centre for Comparative Studies of the same university.