{"id":381015,"date":"2025-01-10T16:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-10T19:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/?p=381015"},"modified":"2025-01-10T14:06:16","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T17:06:16","slug":"group-boosts-arabic-translations-in-brazil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/group-boosts-arabic-translations-in-brazil\/","title":{"rendered":"Group boosts Arabic translations in Brazil"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

S\u00e3o Paulo \u2013 Eleven years ago, a group of undergraduate, graduate, master\u2019s, doctoral, and postdoctoral students came together to discuss and jointly tackle the challenges of Arabic literary translation in Brazil. This marked the birth of Tarjama, which is Arabic for \u201ctranslation\u201d, a collective coordinated by Safa Jubran, a Lebanese native of Marjeyoun. She arrived in Brazil in 1982, stayed, became a professor at the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (USP<\/a>), a researcher, and the most respected translator of Arabic literature in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The research group is affiliated with the same institution where Jubran teaches and has been approved by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). \u201cIt\u2019s like a school for modern Arabic literature translators, where people join, study, learn, and either move on or stay. It\u2019s not a group of professionals but of learners,\u201d she emphasizes. According to Jubran, 90% of its members are Brazilians with no Arab ancestry. \u201cAnd some have already published translations,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jubran recalls that when she arrived in Brazil, there was little availability of literary translations, as publishers were not interested in Arabic literature. \u201cThe only exception was The Book of One Thousand and One Nights<\/em>.\u201d However, this has changed over the years, and she highlights a few reasons. \u201cThe interest of Brazilian publishers and readers in directly translated Arabic literature, with no mediation of another foreign language, began to grow when Egypt\u2019s Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988, and later with the events of September 11.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Jubran believes the most significant moment in this discovery has been unfolding since the creation of a publishing house focused on Arabic literature. \u201cTabla has been providing a large number of high-quality direct translations,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since its inception in 2013, Tarjama\u2019s work has been interrupted a few times, but starting with the pandemic, meetings moved online, allowing people who don\u2019t live in Brazil to participate. In the group\u2019s workflow, participants present their translation suggestions for a pre-selected excerpt. \u201cEvery year, we choose different material. We\u2019ve worked with short stories, then a novella, and now we\u2019ve returned to short stories,\u201d she explains. These first translated stories were published in academic journal Cria\u00e7\u00e3o e Cr\u00edtica<\/em> (2020), and the novella is currently being revised for future publication. \u201cWe\u2019re preparing this year\u2019s collection of stories to be published in another academic journal, thus further expanding the dissemination of Tarjama\u2019s work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To carry out the work, the professor says there are various challenges, some inherent to the translation process itself or the mediation between two languages and multiple cultures. \u201cEach work presents its own translation difficulties and challenges. That\u2019s basically what we discuss in Tarjama.\u201d She explains one of the obstacles present in nearly all texts is the alignment of verb tenses, \u201cPortuguese and Arabic handle this in very different ways. There\u2019s also the challenge of marking dialectal speech that may appear in the text, as well as idiomatic expressions unique to each language.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arabic translator Safa Jubran<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When Jubran arrived in Brazil, she didn\u2019t speak Portuguese, but once she decided to settle in the country, she began studying, took the university entrance exam, and enrolled in college. \u201cLearning Portuguese wasn\u2019t easy\u2014it required a lot of dedication on my part, and in fact, even after more than 40 years here, I\u2019m still learning,\u201d she reveals. Under her care, more than 20 works, including classical texts and a grammar book, have been translated into Brazilian Portuguese, along with several others she translated from Brazilian Portuguese into her native language. For 2025, Tarjama plans to work with texts by young writers addressing contemporary themes. \u201cYoung writers being translated by young translators.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more:
<\/em>Muslims keep Arabic language alive in Brazil<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reportagem de Paula Medeiros, em colabora\u00e7\u00e3o com a ANBA.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Translated by Guilherme Miranda<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n

Supplied<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Coordinated by Safa Jubran, a group of professionals translating between Arabic and Brazilian Portuguese has become a platform for collectively addressing the challenges of the profession and has been contributing to the expansion of Arabic literature\u2019s presence in Brazil.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2343,"featured_media":380243,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[4143,16628,52149,9534,13102,13233,5630,32883,4130,52150,31501,52148,52147,9862],"class_list":{"0":"post-381015","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture","8":"tag-arabic","9":"tag-arabic-literature","10":"tag-arabic-translators","11":"tag-brazil-en","12":"tag-brazilian-portuguese","13":"tag-idioma-arabe-ar","14":"tag-languages","15":"tag-literatura-arabe-en","16":"tag-literature","17":"tag-portuguese-2","18":"tag-safa-jubran-3-en","19":"tag-tarjama-2","20":"tag-translators","21":"tag-usp-en"},"wps_subtitle":"Coordinated by Safa Jubran, a group of professionals translating between Arabic and Brazilian Portuguese has become a platform for collectively addressing the challenges of the profession and has been contributing to the expansion of Arabic literature\u2019s presence in Brazil.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2343"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}