The Louis Wolfson case: is it possible to translate a schizo-language?

• Grant number: 20/08504-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: August 01, 2021
• End date: July 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature
• Principal Investigator: Álvaro Silveira Faleiros
• Grantee: Ciro Martins Lubliner
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 22/01853-6 - The Louis Wolfson case: is it possible to translate a schizolanguage?, BE.EP.PD

Abstract

This project deals with the translation of the first book by the American writer Louis Wolfson (1931-): Le Schizo et les langues. Through the investigation of Wolfson's life and work we will seek to constitute a research that handles with translation as an act of creation, highlighting the experience that will involve the translation process, accompanied by the most diverse themes that the author's writing provokes. Diagnosed since his early youth with Schizophrenia, Wolfson started to dedicate himself - in the periods of hospitalization in psychiatric hospitals - to the study of languages, a task initiated due to the extreme disgust he felt by his mother tongue, English. Deciding to register the events of his life and the gestures used to escape the English language, the author started writing this first work. These movements of escape from the mother tongue ended up rising a certain procedure that made Wolfson forget the sound of the words in English. The description of this procedure is what occupies a large part of his testimonial writing. At the same time as concentrating our efforts on the translation of Le Schizo et les langues, we will try to build a critique for the book, mediated by accompaniments and theoretical devices that assist in the conduction of the translation process. Thus, vectors belonging to the triad proper to translation immersed in the idea of creation will be contemplated: theory, practice and critique. We will then see, above all, intranslating, ascertain what are the delusions that Wolfson's schizophrenic language instigates, or what is the schizophrenic language that the unreason of the self-styled "Schizophrenic language student" invents. (AU)