Valer researcher and book author competes for the Jabuti 2023 award
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The author of the books ‘Brilhos na Floresta’ and ‘A porteira Azul’ published by publisher Valer, Noemia Kazue Ishikawa, is among the semi-finalists for the Jabuti 2023 award, in Eixo Innovation, in the Reading Promotion category, with the work entitled ‘Linklado: digital keyboard for indigenous languages’.
According to the researcher at the National Institute for Amazonian Research (Inpa), several indigenous languages were excluded from the digital revolution because they had special characters in their vocabulary, such as ʉ, ɨ, g̃, ʉ̈̃ and i̇̂, for example, which were not present on most physical and virtual keyboards. This caused speakers of these languages to communicate by avoiding writing or using substitutes for these characters.
Still according to Noemia, the problem was also faced by indigenous students who wanted to write their monographs, dissertations, theses in their languages, as well as writers who wanted to publish their works in indigenous languages.
“This was an anguish that I noticed around 2009, when I worked on a project with the Tikuna (Maguta) people in the Upper Rio Solimões. Since then, I questioned my anthropologist friend Ana Carla Bruno. Why didn’t it have a keyboard in indigenous languages? In 2001, I had written part of my thesis in Japanese on a computer with a Japanese keyboard. So, I couldn’t accept it, if you can write in Japanese with thousands of characters, which is much more complex, why can’t you write less than a dozen characters from the indigenous language?”
From time to time, the researcher and anthropologist had long discussions on the subject. 14 years have passed, many consultations with the IT technology sector. Until one day, she shared this anguish with Samuel Minev Benzecry, who came to her room in search of knowledge about fungi.
“Immediately, he went to talk to his friend Juliano Portela, both 17 years old at the time. The two solved the problem by creating the “Linklado” digital keyboard,
an application that brings together special characters and diacritic combinations that serves more than 40 indigenous languages.
Once created, we moved to a validation phase of the application, we started with the indigenous friends we knew and, suddenly, one started passing it on to the other and soon the first version had already reached places we had not even imagined.”
Noemia explains that after all this, they made the necessary adjustments and officially launched on August 11, 2022, at Banca do Largo.
“Dozens of people have contributed to the creation of Linklado. To whom we are very grateful. For the registration of the Premio Jabuti, the representatives are Ana Carla Bruno, Ruby Vargas Isla Gordiano, Samuel Minev Benzecry, Juliano Portela, and Cristina Quirino Mariano and I, as responsible.”
The winners of the 21 categories, distributed across four axes (Literature, Non-Fiction, Editorial Production and Innovation), in addition to Book of the Year, will be announced at a ceremony at the Theatro Municipal de São Paulo, on December 5th.
Books
The book Brilhos na Floresta is one of the important works because, in addition to the original narrative, which brings scientific practice closer to the modus vivendi of forest people, it is presented in four languages: Portuguese, Japanese, English and Nheengatu, which is unprecedented in the Brazil.
It is a fiction based on a “field diary” entry, which has as its theme the emotion of a group of researchers of, for the first time, seeing, in the darkness of the Amazon rainforest, bioluminescent fungi.
‘A porteira azul’ is a book that falls within the field of chronicle, it brings together texts of everyday adventures. Through it the author, who comes from the field of Biology, makes her debut in literature. Written with good humor and elegance, her chronicles reveal that life can be fun and lighter if we have a positive spirit. It is an incentive for young people to make good and conscious choices in the professional and personal field.
Disclosure
Noemia emphasizes that Linklado needs to be publicized. The application exists, but it still needs to reach more users, the language speakers. Both for everyday use and in academia and the book publishing sector.
“We think that the Jabuti Prize can be an important channel for Linklado to reach the knowledge of more and more indigenous and non-indigenous people who write, publish and increase literature and, consequently, readers in indigenous languages. It makes me very happy to see a person’s smile when they start typing everything in their language using Linklado.”
More about the author/researcher
Born in Londrina, Paraná, the researcher and writer has lived in Manaus since 2004. In 2017, she won the Jabuti Prize, in the Gastronomy category, with the work entitled: ‘Enciclopédia dos Alimentos Yanomami’ (Sanöma), with eight more authors, called: ‘Mushrooms’, by the publisher: Instituto Socioambeintal (ISA) and Hutukara Associação Yanomami (Hay).
Bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences (1995) from the University of Londrina (UEL), master’s degree in Agricultural Microbiology (1997) from the Federal University of Viçosa (UFV), doctorate in Environmental Resources (2001) from Hokkaido University, in Japan. He completed a post-doctorate at Tottori Mycological Institute, in Japan (2010) and Clark University, in the United States (2016).
Researcher at the National Amazon Research Institute (Inpa). She coordinates the Postgraduate Programs in Ecology at Inpa and supervises the Postgraduate Program in Biodiversity and Conservation at the Federal University of Pará – Altamira Campus. His research involves the area of Mycology, working on the following topics: Biology and Physiology of mushroom-forming fungi; cultivation of edible mushrooms (fungiculture), search for new antimicrobial compounds of fungal origin, ethnomycology and mycotourism.
In 2021, he received a Diploma of Honor of Merit from the Consulate of Japan and Manaus. In 2017, she was awarded the Order of Judicial Labor Merit – Commander Degree, Superior Labor Court.
*With information from consultancy
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