Catarina Carvalho

Hi there, fellow lovers of poetry. I’m Catarina, a Brazilian girl passionate about translation and literature. I’m a student in the 4th semester of graduation on Foreign Languages (BA). Although my classes are more focused on Spanish and English Literature and Linguistics, I’ve already had a class about Introduction to Translation Theory and I’m currently having a class about Intersemiotic Translation. In college, I studied mostly classic authors, like William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, Miguel Cervantes and Tirso de Molina.

So, since I mentioned it, let’s talk about the fun part: literature. When I was younger, I loved to read books that had a horror element to them, like “Sharp Objects” (Gillian Flynn), “Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children” (Ransom Riggs), “The Collector” (The Collector) and some tales from Edgar Allan Poe. I also enjoy dystopian novels, like “Brave New World” (Aldous Huxley) and “The Oryx and Crake” trilogy (Margareth Atwood). I know when we talk about dystopia, “Fahrenheit 451” (Ray Bradbury) is always on the list, but, although I read it, it wouldn’t go on my list of favorites.

Well, I’ve already mentioned some international authors that you probably know, but now I want to mention some names from the Lusitan literature (literature done in the Portuguese language) that are very dear and important to me. When we talk about poetry, there is no way not to mention Luís de Camões (author of “The Lusiads”), with the Sonnet XI, and Vinicius de Moraes (author of the famous song “The Girl from Ipanema”), with the “Soneto da Fidelidade” (Sonnet of Fidelity), because they both made beautiful sonnets. Moving on to prose, there's of course Machado de Assis (author of “The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas”), Fernando Pessoa (author of “The Book Of Disquiet”). Well, although there are many more examples that I like, I would like to mention just one more (so this text won't be infinite), and this one is from Mozambique, in Africa. It’s the book Niketche: A Story of Polygamy, from Paulina Chiziane, a writer I didn’t know, but I really appreciated this book.