Interview to Nathalia Chiappani, on Museology
28th October 2007
Can you give me a definition of Museology?
Museology is an interdisciplinary science,
which studies the Museum (its role in society, organization, management and
design) and the evolution of the concept of museum troughout History.
Which is the ideal mission of a museum, in
your opinion?
The ideal mission of a museum is to collect
and preserve our heritage, transmitting the results of its researches to
society and providing an educational and a pleasant environment for its
visitors.
Can you tell me about your collaboration with
a museum in Rio?
For a while, I worked as a volunteer in a
geology/paleontology museum in Rio. It was a short period, but also a great
experience. It is not a big museum and they have a very low budget (as most of
the museums in Brazil), but they have a wonderful collection of rocks and
fossils. My job there was basically to organize and catalog the items that were
not on display. Nowadays I am working for a private art collector.
Do you think that the best way to stimulate
people to visit a museum is a guided visit service or display panels?
In my opinion, the best way to stimulate
museum visitors is using as many interactive resources as possible. Not
everybody has the patience to walk around those big rooms full of things having
to read those tiny labels to find out what are he or she is looking at. That's
the reason why some people consider museums a boring place. When you give the
visitors the opportunity to interact with the exhibition, with the use of
computers and holograms or even touching the objects (this option is not always
possible, though, as it gets in conflict with the concepts of conservation), it
is guaranteed that they will actively enjoy it, specially the children.
Which kind of jobs one can do in Brazil after
obtaining a degree in Museology?
That is something I am still trying to
figure out, as I am still in the second year of the course. In theory, a
professional in this area is able to work in several kinds of institutions that
go from private collections to archives and zoos. Basically, anywhere that
requires a professional capable of organizing exhibitions, familiar with the
concepts of conservation and preservation of items, etc. In practice, things are
not that easy, considering that this profession in Brazil is not well
recognized yet and constantly professionals of other areas are hired to do what
is supposed to be our job.
Do you think you will go to Europe for extra
experience in your field?
I hope I can do that. Europe has so many
great museums and has a lot to offer in terms of culture and knowledge. In the
short time I've been there, I was impressed by the importance given to
education and how the children were stimulated to visit those museums and how
they enjoyed it. Unfortunately, in Brazil our reality is very different. It's
shameful to see that the government just doesn't care about that. Museums,
here, don't have much support from the government, and neither do schools or
universities, and that is a very challenging situation for one who wants to
work with culture and arts.
Let's change subject, now. I know that you
work as a freelancer in movie translations from English to Portuguese. Can you
tell me about your job?
My job as a translator is, basically, to
write a version of the original script in Portuguese. It takes about two days
to translate all the lines of the movie and after it's done, the actors dub
these lines based on this new script. In the future I plan to work also with
book translations.
Which are the greatest difficulties in that
kind of translation?
One of the greatest difficulties regarding
movie translation is writing a line in Portuguese that has the same length as
the one in English, so there won't be any problems like the mouth of the actor
stops moving while he is still talking. It's difficult to do that, especially
because those languages are very different from each other. Besides that,
there's always the problem of slang and jokes. It can be quite hard to find the
correspondent expression in Portuguese and, in the case of jokes, most of the
time I have to create a new one; otherwise it will make no sense at all.