The Louis Wolfson case: is it possible to translate a schizolanguage?

• Grant number: 22/01853-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: September 01, 2022
• End date: August 31, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature
• Principal Investigator: Álvaro Silveira Faleiros
• Grantee: Ciro Martins Lubliner
• Supervisor: François Cusset
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense (Paris 10), France
• Associated to the scholarship: 20/08504-1 - The Louis Wolfson case: is it possible to translate a schizo-language?, BP.PD

Abstract

This project deals with the translation of the first book by the American author 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 youth with schizophrenia, Wolfson started to dedicate himself - in periods of hospitalization in psychiatric hospitals - to the study of languages, a task initiated due to the extreme disgust he felt at his native language, English. Deciding to record the events of his life and the gestures used to escape his mother tongue, the author started writing this first work. These escape movements from the English ended up rising a certain procedure that made Wolfson forget the sound of the words in his mother tongue. 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 work, 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 criticism. We will then glimpse, above all, when translating, to find out what are the delusions that Wolfson' schizophrenic language instigates, or what is the schizo-language that the unreason of the self-titled "schizophrenic language student" invents. (AU)