São Paulo – The Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce (CCAB) is going to release the first Arabic Portuguese dictionary during the Summit of South American-Arab Countries, to take place on May 10 and 11, in Brazilian capital Brasília. The dictionary was organized by Helmi Mohammed Ibraim Nasr, a director of the organization and retired professor from the University of São Paulo (USP).
The dictionary has 70,000 entries, on 400 pages. In the first column of the book is the word in Arabic, followed by its pronunciation and the meaning in Portuguese. For some words the plural, verb conjugation and examples of usage in phrases are also included. “Our colony is enormous and many people are going to need it. It is very important for the entire Arab community in Brazil,” stated Nasr.
The idea of writing the dictionary came from the professor, who left Egypt, his homeland, in the 1960’s to teach Arabic in the Easter Studies Section, at USP. “When I got here there was no material, apart from chalk and a blackboard. Little by little, the demand for the course grew and there was greater and greater need for an Arabic-Portuguese dictionary,” stated the professor. Nasr explained that during his lessons he used an Arabic-Portuguese dictionary, which had been translated from an Arabic-German one.
According to Nasr, in ten years he collected a vast vocabulary, with around 70,000 entries, that were typed. At the time, as there were no computers, it was necessary to use two typewriters, one for the Arabic and another for the Portuguese, so as to type the words. With the aid of a third year student, the professor managed to finish his dictionary in 1972. “It took two years of hard work. We often continued typing till well after midnight,” he explained.
As the college had no funds for publication of the dictionary, the professor distributed photocopies for his students to study. The original sheets were kept in storage by the professor for 32 years, as he hoped to manage to publish them.
It was in 2003 that then CCAB president Paulo Sérgio Atallah suggested taking the pages out of storage for publication of the dictionary, through the CCAB itself. The over 70,000 words were typed into a computer by Abdalla Mansur, the CCAB translator, who finished the work at the beginning of this year. “The Chamber intends to distribute the dictionary to all the participants of the summit,” stated the professor, who still doesn’t know when the dictionary will be made available to the public in general.
43 years in Brazil
The reason for Nasr’s trip to São Paulo is very different from the stories of most of the Arabs who travelled to Brazil. In 1961 Jânio Quadros, then the Brazilian president, visited the Egyptian president, Gamal Abdelnasser, and asked the Egyptian to send an Arabic professor to Brazil to teach the language.
According to Nasr, at the time there was no professor who spoke Portuguese. He, however, spoke fluent French, a language that is closer to Portuguese. “I did not want to come to Brazil. I spoke no Portuguese,” he said. However, Nasr was chosen by the director of the Cairo College of Letters and he came to the country to spend just one year. He is still in the country.
The Egyptian professor graduated in Cairo and finished his masters and doctors degrees in psychology and sociology in France. In May 1962, Nasr started setting up the Eastern Studies department at the USP College of Philosophy. Currently aged 82, the professor is retired but still has tenure as the post-graduate chair in the Arabic Studies course at USP.
“I stayed here because at USP I found a wonderful atmosphere to teach Arabic. The students themselves encouraged me to remain,” stated Nasr.
Apart from the dictionary, the Egyptian professor has also translated the Koran into Portuguese, at the request of the Islamic League in Mecca. The book, which is over 600 pages long, took four years to be translated and 20 years for proofreading and approval, however, it has not yet been published.
*Translated by Mark Ament
