São Paulo – The sign at number 403 on São Paulo’s Luciano Gualberto Avenue indicates that this is the University of São Paulo (USP) building where Language is taught. Go upstairs, past groups of students and down hallways and you get to a place where conversations might be in Arabic, and their subjects might be Middle East books and authors.
The Department of Oriental Languages of the USP’s Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Human Sciences is home to the highest-regarded academic spaces in Brazil when it comes to Arabic studies. Arabic is the subject of graduate (baccalaureate and baccalaureate with licensure) and postgraduate (master’s and doctorate) courses.
The setting is peaceful, as universities tend to be, but on a typical day, near the yellow-door classrooms of the Languages building, one can hear the voices of professors and students alike as they spell words in Arabic – and in Armenian, Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew, Russian and Korean. These are the languages available in graduate courses from the Department of Oriental Languages, headed by a Brazilian-based Lebanese woman: Safa Jubran.
Arabic is everywhere: in the message board on the wall – featuring classes’ dates and hours and even a newspaper interview with an Arabic scholar –, in the books on display in glass casings along the hallways, in the library, in students’ conversations, and especially in Room 25, from where Jubran runs things.
The newspaper interviewee is the Egyptian man who was one of the earliest Arabic professors in the USP course, back in the 1960s, and who helped develop the teaching of the language in the university: Helmi Nasr. He was purposely sent in from Egypt to do so. He also translated the Koran, among other works, and sat in the board of the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce. Some three years ago, aged 93, Nasr returned to his home country.
Currently, 20 new students join the graduate course each year. As they enter the world of Arabic language, philosophy and history, graduates move on to researching a similar, but more advanced world as postgrad students. Master’s and doctorate courses comprise a total of 30 students.
Those who venture into Arabic studies can devote themselves to Arabic and Portuguese, for a double major, or to Arabic alone. Language students all take the same course in their freshman year. After that, they must choose a language. estudará. Admission hinges on grades.
Besides language, the course covers literature, history and philosophy. Language studies are in-depth. “It’s not a course in language. Language is approached an object of study to be learned, mastered, researched,” explains Safa Jubran. Students learn standard Arabic (formerly known as ‘classical’), and two major dialectal groups are covered: Shami (from the Levantine region) and Egyptian.
Jubran explains that literature studies cover classical texts – like the Koran, from the Middle Age, the One Thousand and One Nights, etc. – and others, including modern prose and poetry. Given how vast the Arab world is, however, focusing on any given author for a whole semester is impractical. The Arab world comprises 22 countries.
Philosophy studies are managed by Miguel Attie Filho, and Arlene Clemesha handles History. Language and literature are taught by Safa Jubran, Mona Hawi, Mamede Jarouche, Michel Sleiman and Paulo Farah. Much of the faculty hails from the USP itself, and many are experts in their fields of work, like Jarouche, who translated the One Thousand and One Nights into Portuguese, and Clemesha, who’s often seen discussing Middle East history in media outlets.
Jubran explains that students make a conscious choice in going for the History course, and that they’re often drawn to elements such as the literature, the cinema or the cuisine. “These are young people looking to learn something different, who believe they’re making a difference by learning a language other than English,” she says. Arab descendant students are short in numbers, according to Jubran. “In this new class, I saw two Arab names.”
São Paulo’s 21-year-old Vitória Trombetta, 21, is in her fourth year as a graduate student. Hailing from a non-Arab family, she fell in love with the Language after she’d begun her studies, “I wanted to take advantage of being at the USP and learn a completely different language that will add to my curriculum,” she told ANBA, adding that she was curious about discovering a world that’s not discussed much. Trombetta teaches Portuguese lessons to Arab refugees. She plans on becoming a translator and interpreter and on pursuing postgraduate studies at USP.
More knowledge
In offering a postgraduate course in Arabic, USP becomes a place for development of thinking and research into Arabs and their language. It produces new reflections on linguistics, language, translation, literature, etc. Master’s student Jemima Alves, for instance, is studying the oeuvre of a female Lebanese writer. Doctorate student Felipe Benjamin Francisco is doing research into the dialectology of a region in Morocco. Doctorate holder Christina Stephano de Queiroz focused on the work of a Brazilian poet of Lebanese descent.
Jubran gets carried away discussing postgrad research projects and tells that many of the candidates have been studying Arabic at the USP since they were graduate students. She hopes that they will eventually replace the current faculty of Arabic professors at the university. Jubran tells that a few years ago, after the September 11, 2001 attacks, people who’d seek out postgrad courses would be mostly interested in the portrayal of Arabs by the media. Their backgrounds would be mostly in History and Communication. After that, students interested in Literature and Linguistics began to show up.
The students
One of the students avid for literature is Jemima. Aged 29, she graduated in Languages – Arabic at the USP, and is currently working on a master’s thesis about the book “Innah London Ya Azizi,” by Lebanon’s Hanan al-Shaykh. “She’d been living in England for 20 years and she decided to write a novel about Britain’s capital in Arabic language,” Jemima told ANBA. She will translate excerpts from the novel into Portuguese and discuss the book’s English translation, “Only in London.”
Felipe, 29, is pursuing doctorate studies at the USP’s Department of Oriental Languages as a resident of Spain, under a so-called sandwich-scholarship – meaning part of his research is being done in a different institution. He completed a master’s degree in Arabic at the USP and has been studying Moroccan Arabic ever since. For his doctorate, he decided to work on the dialectology of Arabic from Essaouira, Morocco. “Since the 19th century, there have been no studies into the Arabic spoken in the city of Essaouira and its surroundings,” he said.
Although he isn’t of Arab descent, Felipe explains that he was brought up in the Horto Florestal neighborhood of São Paulo, which was home to many Arabs and descendants. “I always wanted to teach English, but after I got into the Arabic course I discovered a world all its own,” says Felipe. He has worked as an Arabic teacher, translator and interpreter, including volunteer work with refugees. When he gets back in Brazil to complete his doctorate studies next September, he intends to go on teaching. He also plans on becoming a researcher and a volunteer interpreter with refugee-oriented NGOs.
Christina, 37, completed a degree in Journalism at the Pontifical Catholic University (PUC-SP) and a master’s at the University of Barcelona, before getting her PhD at the USP last year with an intellectual biography of the Brazilian-born, Lebanese-descendant poet Jamil Almansur Haddad. “My interest in these immigrant or immigrant-descendant authors began during my master’s work,” she says. Her master’s project was a comparative study of the literary works of Brazil’s Alberto Mussa and Lebanon’s Elias Khoury.
Many of these former USP graduate or postgraduate students have had experiences in the Arab world. Christina spent a long time on a leisure trip to Lebanon, Syria and Morocco. Felipe studied in Morocco while pursuing his master’s degree. Jemima studied in Morocco towards the end of her graduate studies, and in Oman last year. Vitória, who’s about to complete her graduate studies, also intends to go to Oman.
Work is available
The head of the Department of Oriental Languages claims that there are jobs available for Arabic students in Brazil. She mentions the fact that Brazil opened up for trade with Arab countries some ten years ago, creating a demand for translation of labels and packaging of goods for export, increased interested from publishers in having Arabic works translated into Portuguese, and giving rise to Arabic language schools. Safa Jubran herself has translated material into Arabic for major corporations. “Now, I can pass the work on to a student, there’s skilled people around now,” she celebrates.
Students must pass an entrance exam before joining the graduate course in Languages with a major in Arabic. They can choose Arabic at the end of their freshman year, as long as they meet minimum grade requirements. The graduate course in Arabic is available during the morning. Jubran believes this appeals to a student demographic that has more time on their hands to devote to research.
For the master’s and doctorate courses in Arabic, applicants must take an eliminatory test in foreign language, and then a written general knowledge test. As the final step, they must present their project before a panel. Scholarships are available from Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoa de Nível Superior (Capes), but not for every student. In order to apply, students must complete some postgrad subjects and do research.
The postgraduate program is called Jewish and Arabic Studies, but its name is in the process of being changed to Foreign Language and Translation (Línguas Estrangeiras e Tradução – LETRAS), which will also encompass other fields. The lines of research in Arabic will continue to exist.
Besides the languages taught in graduate courses, the Department of Oriental Languages also offers extracurricular courses in Turkish, Czech, Hungarian and Hindi to the community.
Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
