ABSTRACT
In A Tradutora (The Female Translator), Cristovão Tezza’s recently published novel, Beatriz, the protagonist, is a teacher in her thirties who resorts to freelance translation and interpreting work in order to make ends meet (Tezza 2016). Through an omniscient narrator, we are given access to her inner world and everyday routine in the course of three days while she works on her translation of a Catalan/Spanish philosopher and, also, as an interpreter for a German representative of FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) who is on an official visit to Curitiba, Beatriz’ home town, as part of the preparation for the 2014 World Cup that was about to take place in Brazil. According to book reviews published at the time the book was released, the main focus of the novel is the country’s complex reality in the wake of President Dilma Rousseff’s re-election in 2011 and, more specifically, its controversial preparation for the World Cup (see, for example, Filgueiras 2016). For Tezza, who claims he was indeed interested in reflecting on what was going on in Brazil at the time, an important motivation for the construction of his new novel’s plot was the possibility of writing from the perspective of a woman protagonist, half his age, that would supposedly allow him to delve into the imaginary of a female character and gain some insights into the feminine psyche (Tezza 2017).
