CONTROVERSIES ABOUT RACISM IN THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN: A LOOK AT THE USE OF THE WORD ‘MULATA’ IN THE TRANSLATED WORK AND ON SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM X

Abstract

This article aimed to analyze the occurrences of the term ‘mulata’ in the Portuguese translation of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), carried out by Rosaura Eichenberg (2011), as well as to identify the translation strategies used, based on the techniques proposed by Barbosa (2020). Additionally, it sought to investigate the contemporary use of the term on the social media platform X, in order to observe the different manifestations and interpretations associated with the word today. The research corpus is composed of three excerpts from the source text in English and their respective translations, as well as three posts collected from the mentioned social network. This is a qualitative, descriptive study, methodologically based on Corpus Linguistics, and uses the software WordSmith Tools 6.0 (Scott, 2012) for data collection and organization. Theoretical references include authors such as Ramos (2018), Bagno (1999), and Barbosa (2020), among others. The results indicated that the use of the term ‘mulata’ in the analyzed translation does not carry a racist connotation, as it is employed to preserve the meaning of the source text. On the other hand, the data collected from the social media platform reveal multiple perceptions of the term, highlighting denunciations regarding its use.