Today, I awoke to very sad and to be perfectly honest, infuriating news.

I’ve always detested the Portuguese translation of SJM’s books. Everyone and their mother who has talked to me about it knows that I think it is awkward, inaccurate, stilted and just done poorly. Nevermind the lousy choices to translate some nicknames/titles (I’m never getting over Wyvern and Wing Leader).

But this thread is not about my personal feelings on the matter, although it does concern the translation. It has come to my attention that the Brazilian publisher who does the translation — Galera Record, one of the largest in the country — has routinely white-washed characters in their translations. Changed things around so they’re straight, too (I’m sorry, I’ve no idea if there’s a proper term to this).

It was so bad with HoEaB that it went to trending topics and they promised to fix it in the next edition but that does not solve the issue. SJM’s isn’t the only one this happened too. Other big name authors, like Cassie Clara and VE Schwab have had the same issue with their books.

This isn’t about if the books are diverse or no, this is another discussion. This is about the diversity they do have being deliberately changed in the translation. Its absurd, infuriating and it must stop.

This is the original thread posted on twitter. There are other things that thread touches upon, but this is not my concern.

Please if you can read retweet the thread, reblog this post, make your own. But please don’t let this subject be ignored.

I was absolutely delighted to know that The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas new print/translation in the US by Penguin Classics sold out. I urge everyone who can to read it! It’s a marvelous book, one of the great Brazilian classics and the author, Machado de Assis was a man of color (who was historically whitewashed, unfortunately), utterly brilliant and widely regarded as THE greatest writer in Brazilian literature.

If you’re looking for something outside of USA-Europe, give it a try! I wish more people knew Machado de Assis because he deserves the recognition.

“I write in acrobatics and pirouettes in the air - I write because I so deeply want to speak.”

— Clarice Lispector, from “The Passion According to G.H.”