Editorial

Abstract

he opening dossier of this edition of estudos avançados comprises several essays on the art of translation. There has long been interest on this subject, which has recently increased with a large number of excellent translations of narrative and poetic works that have honored our cultural life. This fact-from the publishing market's viewpoint-has to do with the expansion of graduate courses in Literature and the Humanities. Readers of foreign works can master only very rudimentarily the many original languages of the texts that claim their attention: thus, translation imposes itself as a pressing need. A promising trend of this demand is the emergence of proficient translators. A new generation of scholars of modern, classical and indigenous languages signals that good courses of Literature and, more specifically, of Translation have come into existence. Improvisation has given way to the professional training that is gradually replacing self-education with systematic academic study. To be sure, Brazil has had admirable poet-translators who, laboring outside the university, enriched the literary repertoire in Portuguese: