Foreword

I trans­late books, com­ics, and board games for a liv­ing. It’s my dream job, so I may be a little biased when I say it’s the best job in the world. It’s un­deni­able, how­ever, that trans­lat­ing is an ex­tremely im­port­ant job.

On a wider scale, since an­cient times, it plays a ma­jor role in con­nect­ing (and, ul­ti­mately, chan­ging) civil­iz­a­tions and find­ing middle grounds—it’s no won­der it’s said that “trans­la­tions builds bridges”. From an in­di­vidual per­spect­ive, though, it’s just as im­port­ant: be­ing able to ac­cess con­tent ori­gin­ally pro­duced in sev­eral lan­guages wildly ex­pands one’s ho­ri­zon, es­pe­cially when we talk about cul­ture and en­ter­tain­ment. I per­son­ally get emo­tional when I think how dif­fer­ent a per­son I would be if—as a Brazilian girl who couldn’t speak any other lan­guage other than Por­tuguese un­til I was a young adult—I hadn’t had ac­cess to any trans­lated books, com­ics, movies, series, games, and more. I prob­ably wouldn’t be writ­ing this fore­word, as I prob­ably wouldn’t write the fic­tion I write: as much as we have tons of won­der­ful cul­tural con­tent in Brazil, a good part of my fantasy and sci­ence fic­tion ref­er­ences is some­how im­por­ted.

Now, it’s fool­ish to be­lieve this is a one-way road. I do be­lieve that, say, Brazilian lit­er­at­ure could en­rich the rep­er­toire of non-Por­tuguese speak­ers—just to men­tion one art and one na­tion­al­ity. I do be­lieve we have in­ter­est­ing stor­ies to tell, im­port­ant themes to high­light, lots of tal­ent to show. And that’s why I was de­lighted with Eita!’s ini­ti­at­ive since I first heard about it. As Rachel Cor­dasco said in her fore­word for Eita!’s is­sue 000, for too long there was too little SF in trans­la­tion from Brazil in the anglo­phone mar­ket—and it was about time to change it.

As­sum­ing you’re a non-Por­tuguese speaker, I daresay you wouldn’t be read­ing the stor­ies in which you’re about to dive in if it wasn’t for Eita!. You wouldn’t weep with Amanda Nunes’s “Please Open This Let­ter While I'm At Work”. You wouldn’t laugh at the witty plot twist in “How to Deal with In­con­veni­ent Guests”, by Mar­ina Melo (trans­lated by Nat­alle Moura). You wouldn’t ask WTF is that? (in a good way, of course) while read­ing Michel Peres’s “Nilsinho Pause”, trans­lated by Vanessa Guedes. You wouldn’t mar­vel at how it’s pos­sible to fit so much world­build­ing in so few words while read­ing “No salary jus­ti­fies cer­tain tribu­la­tions”, by San­ti­ago San­tos (trans­lated by An­dré Col­a­belli). And I as­sume you would never hear about “The Pan-plan­et­ary Con­gress”, by Lima Bar­reto, trans­lated by Iana A.—well, I didn’t know Lima Bar­reto used to write sci­ence fic­tion, even though I’m from Brazil and he’s one of the most im­port­ant and tal­en­ted writers of ours.

That said, I can af­firm Eita! is one hell of a bridge—or a col­lec­tion of bridges, one for each is­sue at least. I’m very glad to be here, cut­ting the rib­bon of this one. Come! Don’t hes­it­ate to cross it and know a little bit of what Brazil SFF has to of­fer. If this is your first con­tact with the magazine, go cross the pre­vi­ous bridges too—you won’t re­gret it. Maybe you’ll even grab a brick and build a new bridge some­where.

Jana Bi­an­chi

June, 2021