Barbara Zocal Da Silva

Barbara Zocal Da Silva is a multiracial woman from the countryside of São Paulo, Brazil, translator, interpreter and is passionate about languages and cultures. She works as an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, of the University of Maryland, as co-coordinator for the Portuguese and Brazilian Studies Minor Program, and co-coordinator for the Center of Translation and Interpreting (SPAP). She holds a PhD in Spanish from the University of São Paulo (LELEHA/FFLCH, 2022), with an emphasis in Translation Studies. Her research focuses on the reception of translations of Hispanic-American women published in Brazil, as presented in her thesis "Betwixt Maitena and PowerPaola: a historiography sin fronteras of Spanish-American graphic narratives translated in Brazil'' (2022). A synthesis of her research is presented in the Mexican podcast Componentes literários: Traducción y recepción de historietas (2021). In addition, her research and practical work focus on humanitarian/community translation and interpreting studies, feminist, decolonial, and anti-racist practices.

Publications

Her most recent published translation is "Guía básica de derechos laborales y seguridad social para inmigrantes y refugiados" (GEMDIT/USP, 2022). She translated poems of José Antonio Ramos Sucre (1921, 1929), Rafael Cadenas (1958, 1977), and Alfredo Silva Estrada (1970, 1974) published in Mostra de poesia venezuelana (Malha Fina Cartonera, 2020); reviewed the Brazilian Portuguese translation of bell hooks' book Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (2019), and translated the comic books 5 por Infinito (Pipoca & Nanquim, 2018), by Esteban Maroto (Spain), and Rupay and Barbarie (Veneta, 2016), by Alfredo Villar, Luis Rossell and Jesús Cossio (Peru).

Her chapter A tradução linguística nos quadrinhos: práticas de tradução e análise (Lexikos, 2020) contributes to expanding discussions on the translation of comics field. She co-edited the journal Cadernos de Literatura em Tradução 21 – Especial Autoras (Tradterm, 2019). 

In 2019, Barbara performed a reading of an original poem "Compass Rose" at the Millennium Stage at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in Washington, D.C.