São Paulo – Starting on Monday, 11, Brazilian bookstores should start receiving the Arabic-Portuguese Dictionary, authored by the Lebanese Alphonse Nagib Sabbagh, the founder of the Arab Studies Department at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) who lives in Brazil. Sabbagh has been working with lexicography, the writing and development of dictionaries, for 40 years, and, in 2004, published a Portuguese-Arabic dictionary, through Lebanese publishing house Librairie Du Liban.
The new dictionary was edited in partnership with Almádena publishing house, headquartered in Rio de Janeiro and specialized in themes of Arab culture, and the National Library Foundation. According to the editor and owner of Almádena, João Baptista de Medeiros Vargens, the author counted on the collaboration of students and professors in the Arab Studies Centre at UFRJ to elaborate the dictionary.
The hard-covered Arabic-Portuguese Dictionary has 768 pages and some 60,000 entries. The preface is by the Arab Course professor at the University of São Paulo (USP), Safa Jubran. "The work is important to those who deal with the two languages: students, translators, diplomats, businessmen," said Vargens. The release will take place in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Brasília and Foz do Iguaçu, in Brasil, as well as in Lisbon and Silves, in Portugal.
Sabbagh is 93 years old and was born in the Lebanese city of Deir El Kamar. Apart from being a specialist in Arabic, he is also a monsignor in the Greek Melkite Catholic Church. In Lebanon, Sabbagh studied at a school in which teaching was in French. Between 1938 and 1945, he also lived in France, where he studied Greek and Latin. Then he lived in Lebanon for some more time and later moved to Brazil, following his family, who had migrated.
In Brazil, apart from dedicating himself to the study of religious activities, he entered the academic world, first in the Pontifical Catholic University (PUC-RJ) and then at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, where he created the Arab Studies Sector.
"My cultural academic work is like that of a monk. Reading, writing, correcting, researching, reviewing, rewriting… It is very beautiful, and provides great satisfaction on discovering the subtle difference that Portuguese generated between the meaning of one word and another, especially due to the fact that I was not born in Brazil," said Sabbagh, in an interview to Almádena publishing house.
Apart from Sabbagh’s work, in 2005, an Arabic-Portuguese dictionary was also published by professor Helmi Nasr, who is Egyptian and naturalized Brazilian. Nasr is the Foreign Relations vice president at the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce and founded USP’s Arabic course.
Service
Arabic-Portuguese Dictionary
Author: Alphonse Nagib Sabbagh
Publishing House: Almádena and National Library Foundation
Pages: 768
Price: 299 Brazilian reals (US$ 186 at bookstores) and 169 reals (US$ 105) on the publisher’s site: www.almadenaeditora.com.br
*Translated by Mark Ament
