The First Book Translated Directly from Belarusian to Be Published in Brazil
The book "Constitution" by Belarusian writer Hanna Yankuta will be published in Portuguese translation. The São Paulo-based publishing house Toma Aí Um Poema has already launched pre-orders. They will run for two months, and the final print run will depend on the results. The translation is being prepared by Volha Franko, budzma.org reports .
“Towards the end of this difficult and dark year, a miracle happened to me — Volha Franko is preparing a translation of ‘Constitution’ into Brazilian Portuguese,” Hanna Yankuta wrote on her Facebook page.
The writer also noted that a comprehensive preface is being prepared about the situation in Belarus, about which almost nothing is known in South America:
“… I hope the book will provide an opportunity to broaden knowledge about our country. I feel very happy — for the past four years, I have been working on Belarusian stories from South America and the Caribbean (the result should also see the light of day soon), and the fact that ‘Constitution’ will appear in one of the countries in the region truly feels like a miracle.
The main credit for the preparation of this book, and for the fact that people in Brazil know anything about Belarus at all, belongs to Volya Franko, who actively works at the intersection of three cultures — Belarusian, Brazilian, and Ukrainian. She translates from Portuguese into Belarusian (Machado's ‘Once Upon a Time There Was a Tyrant’ and others), from Ukrainian into Belarusian (a poetry collection by Kryvtsov), from Ukrainian into Portuguese (Kryvtsov, Dron, Deresh) — and, of course, from Belarusian into Portuguese.
In this combination of languages, she has translated a number of individual texts; however, ‘Constitution’ will be her first book translated from Belarusian into Portuguese. Moreover, it will be the first book in Brazil translated directly from the Belarusian language. Until now, as Volya says, Belarusian literature in Brazil was translated only from Russian (Svetlana Alexievich) or from a Polish translation (Frantsishak Alyakhnovich).”
The book can be ordered in both print and electronic formats via the link.