The Bibliographic Dictionary of Translated Italian Literature in Brazil is the result of a research project developed, since 2010, by Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) and the University of São Paulo (USP), and has already had the support of CNPq and FAPESP and intends to gather as much data as possible on works of Italian literature translated in Brazil.
Due to their common interests, the Nucleus of Contemporary Studies of Italian Language and Literature (NECLIT) and the Nucleus of Research in Informatics, Literature and Linguistics (NUPILL) decided to unite. Data from the Bibliographical Dictionary of Translated Italian Literature were migrated to the NUPILL platform, with the support of the Distributed Systems Research Laboratory.
Data consultation is available to any type of user, from the curious and amateurish reader to people in the publishing market, translators or specialist researchers.
The catalog presents for each work a bibliographic detail, which is accompanied by information about the Italian authors. But the starting point was also to think about translated literature as an integral part of the history of the arrival literature system, its history being fundamental for the formation and transformations of literary history. In this sense, an important entry is the paratexts (preface, afterword, presentation, illustration, etc.), as well as some covers that speak a lot about how a certain work was received and started to circulate in Brazil.
The Dictionary, as a research source, helps to understand a little more, and to answer, some inevitable questions for those who work with foreign literature, such as: how and to what extent the works of translated literature interfere in the environment of arrival, in the Brazilian culture and literature? What are the selection criteria for works to be translated? How can the relations between the literary world and the political, economic and social forces that decide, encourage or oppose the fortune of certain works and ideas be described, promoting or not their dissemination? Is there a direct relationship between the hierarchies established in the canons of the starting literature and those of the literature that welcomes it? Or is there – as seems more likely – a fluctuation that depends on the numerous variants that intervene in the process between the various markets?
The Bibliographic Dictionary of Italian Literature is always active, whether in the insertion of new records or in the correction of some data. It is a “work”, the Dictionary, which by its very nature, even with all the rigor of the research, can only always present itself incomplete, always to be completed.
The project team is variable, more than 40 researchers have already worked on this project, but it is always composed of professors, graduate and undergraduate students, and specialized technicians.
Therefore, we would like to ask for the collaboration of all users for the improvement of the data, sending us all the doubts and suggestions that they find relevant (neclit.ufsc@gmail.com).
More information about DBLIT can be found on the website NECLIT-UFSC