There are translation projects I can describe in detail. I can discuss their terminology, explain their linguistic challenges, identify the subject area and show how particular sentences were adapted for their intended audience.

This is not one of those projects.

I recently completed another pro bono English-to-Brazilian Portuguese translation for Progressive International through the ProZ.com Pro Bono Program. The text concerns a current armed conflict, but confidentiality prevents me from disclosing its specific subject, geographical context, title, content or any other detail that could make the document identifiable.

I can, however, talk about what it means to translate a text like this — linguistically, professionally and personally.

When the subject reaches beyond the screen

When the Islamic State and the Taliban became a constant presence in international news coverage, my eldest son, Pedro, was about two years old. At the time, I stopped watching the news.

This was not because I did not care about what was happening. It was precisely because I cared too much and could not create enough emotional distance between the events I was seeing and the child sleeping in my home. The images and reports followed me into the night. I began having vivid nightmares, repeatedly, until avoiding the news became a form of self-protection.

Years later, while translating this document, I felt the same physical reaction return.

There are texts that we understand intellectually. Then there are texts that the body understands before the mind has finished processing them. This was one of those texts. I felt the revolt in my stomach. Certain passages produced the same visceral response I had experienced while reading some of the most graphic sections of O Anjo Branco, by José Rodrigues dos Santos.

Nevertheless, the translator cannot look away.

The work still requires accuracy. Every sentence must be read closely. Every reference must be understood. Every term must be researched. The emotional weight of the material cannot become an excuse to distort it, soften it, sensationalise it or replace the author’s voice with the translator’s reaction.

That is one of the hardest balances in this kind of work: remaining fully human while exercising professional restraint.

Brazilian Portuguese is not European Portuguese with different spelling

The target language of this project was Brazilian Portuguese. As a native European Portuguese translator, I approach this distinction very seriously because Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese are not interchangeable versions of an otherwise identical language.

The differences extend far beyond words such as comboio and trem, telemóvel and celular, or ficheiro and arquivo. The two variants differ in preferred vocabulary, sentence structure, forms of address, pronoun use, verb constructions, placement of clitic pronouns, frequency and function of the gerund, idiomatic expressions, collocations, punctuation habits and degrees of formality. A sentence may be grammatically understandable in both variants and still sound unmistakably foreign, stiff or unnatural to Brazilian readers. Some terms also carry different political, institutional or emotional associations depending on the country and context.

This matters in every translation, but it becomes especially important when the subject involves violence, armed conflict, human suffering and urgent political realities.

The language must not create unnecessary distance between the text and its readers. It must sound natural without becoming casual, remain precise without becoming sterile and preserve the force of the source without turning suffering into spectacle.

Adapting a text for Brazilian Portuguese is therefore not a matter of changing a handful of spellings at the end of the process. It requires sustained attention to the target audience throughout the entire translation.

The responsibility of carrying testimony across languages

Why translate material that is painful to read?

Because silence does not protect the people living through these events. It mainly protects the rest of us from having to confront them.

International attention is not distributed fairly. Some conflicts remain continuously visible, while others disappear from public discussion despite the fact that people continue to be displaced, injured, deprived of essential resources or killed. Language determines who can access testimony, analysis and calls for international action. When information remains available only in one language, its reach is limited, and so is its ability to generate understanding, pressure or solidarity.

Translation cannot stop a war. It cannot restore a home, return a child to a parent or undo what has already happened. It would be dishonest to pretend otherwise.

But translation can prevent an account from remaining confined to one linguistic community. It can help evidence, testimony and political analysis reach readers who would otherwise never encounter them. It can help organisations draw international attention to realities that are too easily ignored. It can make it harder for distance — geographical, cultural or linguistic — to become an excuse for indifference.

That is why this work matters.

Pro bono does not mean professionally secondary

The absence of a commercial fee does not reduce the level of professional responsibility involved.

On the contrary, work dealing with politically sensitive and potentially traumatic material demands rigorous terminology research, careful cultural adaptation, consistency, confidentiality and close attention to the ethical implications of every linguistic choice.

Pro bono translation is not casual work carried out when nothing more important is available. It is professional linguistic work contributed to organisations and causes whose messages need to cross borders but may not have the resources to make that possible.

The translator still has to protect confidential information. The target text still has to read as though it had originally been written for its audience. Complex realities still need to be conveyed without euphemism, distortion or gratuitous sensationalism. The people represented in the text deserve that care, regardless of whether the assignment appears on an invoice.

Translating without becoming numb

I do not want to become indifferent enough for this material to feel easy.

At the same time, feeling its full weight cannot prevent me from doing the work properly. The task is to transform that reaction into greater care: another terminology check, another rereading of an ambiguous sentence, another decision examined from the perspective of the people whose reality is being described.

There is no clean emotional conclusion to a translation about an ongoing armed conflict. I completed the document, but the subject does not simply disappear when the file is delivered. Some passages remain in the mind. Some remain in the body.

Perhaps that discomfort is part of what reminds us why these texts need to circulate.

I cannot disclose what this particular document says. I can only say that it concerns realities the international community must continue to see, discuss and confront — and that helping those realities cross a language barrier was work worth doing.