Translation of science fiction in Brazil: the case of female authors

Abstract

Just like research has shown, there has been an increasing interest and demand for literary productions by female writers. This might sound somewhat surprising as we analyze the (previous and recent) history of the reception of international literature translated here in Brazil, which tended to privilege male authors, who were the majority in the percentage of writers published by large publishing houses. Thus, I will seek to make some points about power, by the works of Michel Foucault. Then, I will direct those reflections with the support of female translation researchers: Esteves (2014) with translation as political intervention; Ergun (2013) with translation and intellectual activism; Almeida (2023) with translation as a political act of resistance, and the inclusion of an indirect theorization by Haran (2023), in which I relate translation with her imaginactivism. After these theoretical considerations, I intend to present some examples, taking science fiction as my delimitation. In particular, I mean female authors who were translated very late in Brazil, either by large publishing houses or by smaller ones, or specific academic projects, pondering about this interval of time between publication and translation and projecting some political consequences of a better balance in the publicization of literary texts regarding authorial gender. Among my examples are: Octavia Butler, Suzette Haden Elgin, Clare Winger Harris, Marge Piercy, African female writers published in Omenana Magazine and the collections of short stories Irmãs da Revolução (Editora Aleph, 2023) and Estrelas: mulheres pioneiras da ficção científica, volumes 1 and 2 (Scifi Tropical, 2024, 2025). The text was based on a presentation I gave at 44^a Semana do Tradutor, at the round table called “Tradução e Poder (Translation and Power)”.