ABSTRACT
This chapter conceives translators’ accounts about their work as acts of reframing and self-reframing, in the sense that these texts help translators craft an identity for themselves, while constructing a public image of the translator figure in a specific time and space. In both cases, translators may validate or challenge pre-existing frames, i.e., conventional narratives about translators and translation. The study examines 20 explanatory texts written by translators for their versions of literary works published in Portugal from 2000 to 2017. It concludes that these translators tend to evoke a more traditional frame about the translator’s task, to reassure and seduce their readers, which they then reinterpret to endorse a more unconventional narrative about what it means to be a good translator. This, in turn, provides some insights into what the perceived conventions about translation are in twenty-first century Portugal.
