The Silva Mendes’ Cultural Translation In “Chuang-Tzu And The Death Of His Wife”

Abstract

This essay aims to analyze the poem “Chuang-tzú e a morte de sua mulher” by the author Manuel da Silva Mendes, based on the book of the Chinese philosopher 莊子 Zhuāngzǐ. Considered the first Portuguese to study and disseminate the Chinese Taoist tradition in Macao, Silva Mendes dedicated a large part of his written work to disseminate the Chinese philosophy and culture to the Portuguese-speaking public in the region. To this end, the author wrote poetic versions in Portuguese language of some excerpts from the classic books of the Chinese Taoist tradition 道德經 Dào Dé Jīng by 老子 Lǎozǐ, and 南華經 Nán Huá Jīng by 莊子 Zhuāngzǐ with a didactic proposal for interpretive facilitation at the expense of hermeticism present in the original texts and current translations of that time. The objective of this essay is, through the analysis of one of these poems, to demonstrate, from the concept of cultural translation, how this interpretive facilitation takes place, showing the means used by the author to achieve this proposal. For the purpose of analyzing the aforementioned poem, a comparison will be made with the classical Chinese original and with the English translation of the Scottish sinologist James Legge.