Lost in translation? From "O Escravo" to "A Ilha dos Escravos"

Abstract

The adaptation of literary works to film raises a complex series of theoretical and practical questions which have long been discussed. These, however, may become more complex should the distance between the book and the film be even wider, as when there occurs a transition from colonial to post-colonial times, and when the director chooses a sharp transformation of the plot and outlines of the characters, giving the film a different slant from the one that characterized the novel. This paper discusses the case of Francisco Manso, a well-known Portuguese director and producer, whose work includes the film adaptation of literary texts from Cape Verde, such as O testamento do Senhor Nepumoceno da Silva Araújo (1997), A ilha dos escravos (2008) and Os dois irmãos (2018). I shall focus on the second of these films, arguing that this adaptation is not a mistranslation of O Escravo, a pioneer novel by José Evaristo d'Almeida published in 1856.