Domingos Evangelista, translator of Ferrière’s works: Reflections on a conservative translation of l’école active

Abstract

With this text, we intend to contribute to a reflection on the meaning of the conservative and Catholic appropriations of the New School, which took place in the initial phase of the Portuguese Estado Novo. This is part of a larger project that aims at describing what António Nóvoa calls “nationalist pedagogy”. We will take as an example the written production of an educator who, from this point of view, takes on a paradigmatic role: Domingos Evangelista. Concretely, we will look at his translation of Adolphe Ferrière’s L’école active (1934). Since we use the notion of “translation” in a broad sense, not only in its literal meaning but, in particular, in its connection to the ideas of appropriation and interpretation, it will be central here to draw on the contributions of Cultural History. We will use the works of Domingos Evangelista, whose content we will analyze, as sources.

Keywords: translation, active school, nationalist pedagogy.