1 (N.T.) According to the editors’ footnote, the Syrian of Belem is a wordplay on the popular party of the Cirio de Belem, also known as Cirio de Nazaré (The Plater of Nazareth). The party is held in the city of Belem to honor Our Lady of Nazareth.

2 (N.T.) The punctuation marks of the source text are purposely left in the translated text to indicate an essential element of the writer’s intentionality and style.

3 (N.T.) Castro Alves (1847-1871) is the name of a Brazilian romantic poet used as a common noun to highlight the very baroque abuse of grandiosity and hyperbole of nature. (Andrade, 2002, p. 130)

4 (N.T.) This poem by Gonçalves Dias, published in 1851, tells the story of I-Juca-Pirama (the one who must die in Tupi), who, as a prisoner, is about to be sacrificed by a rival tribe that practices cannibalism. It is considered a masterpiece of Brazilian literature.

5 (N.T.) The Ver-o-Peso port is part of an architectural complex inaugurated in 1901 and located in the historic center of Belém. The complex covers an area of more than 26,000 square meters and includes the Fish Market, the Meat Market, the Açaí Market and an open-air market that is considered the largest in Latin America.

6 (N.T.) Emphasis was rather placed on the strangeness of the syntactic structures as used here to reveal the flexibility of the language of the source text and, in a more personal stance, the ability of the author so that his writing bears the stamp of his own style. For this purpose, ‘pink blue black’ are not separated by commas to represent the colors of the sails as they appear successively before the eyes of the beholder.

7 (N.T.) As above, the syntactic construction was kept in order to preserve the defamiliarization conceived by the author of the source text and his intentionality on the readership.

8 (N.T.) A traditional yellow sauce extracted from wild manioc root but cooked before human consumption to eliminate its high level of toxicity.

9 (N.T.) A dish made of corn grains cooked in a sugary juice, with coconut milk and cinnamon.

10 (N.T.) From “sitting on the floor” to “mungunzá,” the passage has three repetitions and an idiosyncratic punctuation system, to say the least. Both the repetitions and the absence of several commas have been retained to maintain the rhythm intended by the author.

11 (N.T.) A popular version of a 16th century Iberian legend in which an ox is killed and resurrected.

12 (N.T.) Boi-bumba is also called Boi-Canário in some other states.

13 (N.T.) Boi-bumba is also called bumba meu boi in some other states

14 (N.T.) Nicknamed Lampião, Virgulino Ferreira da Silva (1898-1938) was a bandit leader in Brazil’s Northeast. His actions, good or bad, created fame and turned him into a folk hero, but a real torment for the local authorities.

15 (N.T.) The expression ‘pequeno almoço’ is widely used in Portugal meaning breakfast. Small lunch is a literal translation used to corroborate the idea that the cabin boy used a translated language. Without such perspective, the term breakfast could be used separately as in break fast, by inserting the qualifier before the noun, signifying then the interruption of a fast.