Reconceiving hipólito josé da costa as a transatlantic translator

This article situates Hipólito José da Costa (1774-1823) as a translator traveling between Brazil, Europe, and the United States by analyzing his Diário da minha viagem para Filadélfia (1798-1799) and the Correio braziliense, the London-based periodical he edited from 1808 to 1822. This focus on his role as a translator complements existing studies that highlight the biographical and the political to characterize Hipólito as a courier or an intermediary. I contend that translator is a more appropriate term since Hipólito engaged in acts of translation by extending the life of European and North American ideas to a readership in Brazil through the Correio braziliense. By reading his diary alongside the Correio braziliense, I underscore Hipólito's evolving views of Brazil as situated within the Portuguese Empire and seen from a hemispheric perspective. As a proto-Brazilian subject, Hipólito remained nominally loyal to Portugal as he resituated himself as an intellectual of the Americas.