Pensando a adaptação de intérpretes em um ecossistema cultural no além-mar: reflexões iniciais

Abstract

This work intends to observe in a holistic way how the contact between Europeans and natives occurred during the 16th and 17th centuries. For this, this article will use examples of two distinct situations related to the colonizer-colony relation. The first one concerns the connection between interprets and the Tupinambá Indians in Rio de Janeiro during the 16th century, in the context of the colony called France Antarctique, established in Guanabara Bay. The second situation began in the 16th century and lasted until the end of the 17th century, and it has as an approach the cultural contacts established between Portuguese and natives of the so-called Royaume de Barre, 1669, now The Gambia, in Africa. We will use as a methodological basis for this research the concept of Cultural Ecosystem presented by Couto (2018). This concept will allow us to observe the results of cultural contacts based on an ecological vision of the world (EVW), which will help us to understand the facts that have occurred throughout the situations that will be presented here. In this way, the discussion here proposed aims to obtain deeper insight on the diverse forms in which the contact between individuals belonging to a certain cultural ecosystem was given, as they were inserted, forcedly or voluntarily, in another cultural ecosystem. As a direct consequence of these contacts, the need for an adaptation to the environment — which was imposed on individuals whose function as interprets was being an intermediary between European navigators and natives —, is remarqued always in acts of negotiation with one another. These agreements have caused the linguistic intermediation to be undeniably essential, both in America and in Africa, which culminated in a closest relationship between the natives of the colonies and the individuals to whom the intermediary role was delegated.