ABSTRACT
António Lobo Antunes is one of the most translated Portuguese authors. This chapter analyses two translations of his novel As Naus (1988): the translation into English by Gregory Rabassa (The Return of the Caravels, 2002) and the one into Italian by Vittoria Martinetto (Le navi, 1997). The chapter argues that this is a work in which context is particularly important, insofar as it has a strong ironic dimension, which is used to challenge the dominant narrative about Portugal’s historical past. It looks into the translators’ professional trajectories and tries to briefly characterize the target contexts in which they operate. Attention is paid both to translation choices at the textual level and to paratextual elements, in an attempt to assess the effect concerning style and ideology.
