As works of fction, gamebooks offer narrative-bound choices – the
reader generally takes on the role of a character inserted in the narrative
itself, with gamebooks consequently tending towards being a story told
in the second-person perspective. In pursuance of this aim, they can, in
some cases, adopt gender-neutral language as regards grammatical gender, which in turn poses a translation challenge when rendering the texts
into Portuguese, a language strongly marked by grammatical gender.
Stemming from an analysis of a number of gamebooks in R. L. Stine’s
popular Give Yourself Goosebumps series, this article seeks to understand
how gender indeterminacy (when present) is kept in translation, while
examining the strategies used to this effect by Portuguese translators –
and particularly how ideas of implied readership come into play in the
dialogue between the North-American and Portuguese literary systems.
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