Translator’s Note
It has been my privilege to provide English readers with a translation of O diabo e a terra de Santa Cruz, a work remarkable both for its scholarship and for the richness of Laura de Mello e Souza’s prose. In my approach to this task, I have sought not to lend Laura my own voice but to craft an English rendition of hers. Translation is a series of roads taken or not taken, and I hope I have kept readers on the truest path.
In this short note I would like to shed some light on my methods and offer glimpses into what has on occasion been lost—or even added—along the way, with the intent of achieving a balance between readability for foreign eyes and fidelity to content and style.
A great number of quotations in the book were extracted from Inquisition trial records and Devassas, written mostly in seventeenth- to eighteenth-century Portuguese. Transcribed by hand and unedited, these originals were rife with run-on sentences, repetitious vocabulary, and perplexing pronouns that in some places leave the reader with a furrowed brow. After consultation with the author, I omitted a few expressions of quite obscure meaning (e.g., alho íngreme), in our judgment without harming the text. Where a particular transcript excerpt was so obscure as to be potentially misleading, I at times inserted punctuation, rendered tense usage consistent within a passage, broke sentences into shorter units, or made other minor changes to reduce ambiguities (e.g., replacing a pronoun with a proper name). Yet it would be a deception to provide absolute clarity in a translation when it is not to be found in the original, so the reader will still encounter traces of mystery. Indeed, my goal was never to revise the transcripts but, by adhering closely to their original structure, to preserve much of their flavor and impact.
Two final comments on these and other quotations from pre–nineteenth century Portuguese: every effort has been made to avoid anachronistic use of vocabulary, while modern English spelling has been employed throughout.
Another of the particular challenges in translating this book was the number of quotations that had traveled into Portuguese through one or sometimes two other languages. Where published English-language versions of these works were available to me (and when the corresponding citations could be located), these were used. For the most part this likewise applies to works originally authored in Portuguese, as indicated in the notes.
In the endeavor to reproduce a text in a different language and culture, the singularity of a term in the source language at times forces us to admit that we are dwelling in a foreign universe. Definitions of terms that I judged best left in Portuguese are found in the glossary. For example, the semantics of skin color is a complex question in Brazil, where people are not only “black” or “white” but may also be cafuzo, pardo, mulato, mulato claro, criolo, moreno, cabra, sarará, caboclo, and so on. Moreover, the meanings assigned to these words have differed over time. I chose to translate only three such terms: negro and preto, both of which were rendered throughout the text as “black,” and branco or white. All other designations related to skin color were kept in Portuguese and loosely defined in the glossary.
Military nomenclature from colonial Brazil is another complex case. But since the precise significance of these terms was only incidental to the text at hand, they were either translated literally or maintained in Portuguese, followed by a rough approximation in English.
One term deserves special note. Feitiçaria, which can be translated as either “sorcery” or “witchcraft,” has been rendered as “sorcery” (and feiticeiro/a as “sorcerer/ess”). The only exceptions occur where standard English usage prefers a form of the word “witch” (e.g., Horace’s witch and the Salem witchcraft trials). Weighing in this choice were the author’s own thoughts on the distinction between witchcraft and sorcery, which she addresses in the introductory pages of part II.
Finally, while the book has undergone no revision since its 1986 publication in Brazil, century references have been updated to account for the intervening advent of the new millennium.
While I of course bear ultimate responsibility for the hits or misses of this translation, I would like to acknowledge the valuable assistance of many others. First and foremost, I am grateful to Laura de Mello e Souza, with whom I have enjoyed a rewarding working relationship for some years. As always, the author was indefatigable in her willingness to help untangle obscure passages, track down meanings dimmed by time, or unravel yet another doubt.
Special thanks are owed to Professor Luiz Mott and Professor Francis Dutra, colleagues of the author, who generously offered their assistance with certain terms and translations. Others who kindly responded to my or Laura’s requests for clarifications within their areas of expertise include Auxiliomar Ugarte, Luciano Raposo de Almeida Figueiredo, Márcia Moisés Ribeiro, and Neri de Almeida Souza.
Last, I could have neither begun nor ended this project without the encouragement, indulgence, and culinary support of my husband-cum-proof-reader, Michael R. Whitty. While Lynx watched over my shoulder, Michael watched over my body and soul. My deepest thanks.