Antônio Houaiss ( or ; October 15, 1915 – March 7, 1999) was a Brazilian lexicographer, diplomat, writer and translator.

Early life

The son of Lebanese immigrants, he was born in

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro, or simply Rio, is the capital of the Rio de Janeiro (state), state of Rio de Janeiro. It is the List of cities in Brazil by population, second-most-populous city in Brazil (after São Paulo) and the Largest cities in the America ...

.(2012)
Houaiss, Antonio
. Itaú Cultural Encyclopedia Online, last updated 24/feb/2012. Vasco Mariz (1995), "Antônio Houaiss: uma vida." Ed. Civilização Brasileira

Career

Houaiss began his career in Rio de Janeiro as a professor of the

Portuguese language Portuguese ( or ) is a Western Romance language of the Indo-European language family originating from the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It is the official language of Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal and São Tom� ...

, of which he eventually became a recognized authority. He left teaching in 1945 for the diplomatic service and served the Brazilian government as such until the 1964 military coup, when he was forced to retire with loss of political rights. During that period he was Brazilian vice-

consul Consul (abbrev. ''cos.''; Latin plural ''consules'') was the title of one of the two chief magistrates of the Roman Republic, and subsequently also an important title under the Roman Empire. The title was used in other European city-states thro ...

and representative to the

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(1947 to 1949); third secretary of the Brazilian Embassy in the

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(1949 to 1951) and in

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(1951 to 1953); member of the permanent Brazilian delegation to the United Nations in

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(1960 to 1964).
Antônio Houaiss - Biografia
Website of the Academia Brasileira de Letras, accessed on 2012-12-28. After leaving the diplomatic career he worked briefly as editor of the Brazilian newspaper Correio da Manhã (1964 to 1965). He joined the Brazilian Academy of Philology in 1960 and was elected a fellow of the exclusive Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1971, which he presided in 1996. He was the chief editor of the Brazilian encyclopedia Mirador. In 1990 he received the Moinho Santista Award. For 11 months, in 1992 and 1993, he served as the Minister of Culture under President Itamar Franco. He was also one of the chief proponents of the international unification for the orthography of Portuguese, a project that he had joined in 1985, and led to the 1990 spelling reform treaty, which he too did not live to see implemented.Folha da Manhã (2009)
Maior ideólogo da reforma ortográfica, Houaiss morreu sem ver resultado da obra
(Obituary). Folha Online, 2009-03-07.

Published works

He is the author of several books and many essays, commentaries and articles on linguistics and other subjects. He is best known for his 1966 translation of

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...

's '' Ulysses'',Antônio Houaiss (1966) "Ulisses" (Portuguese translation of James Joyce's ''Ulysses'', 1922). Editora Civilização Brasileira, 960 pages. . and for supervising with Mauro de Salles Villar the creation of the Dicionário Houaiss da Língua Portuguesa,Antônio Houaiss and Mauro Villar (2001),
Grande Dicionário Houaiss Houaiss da Língua Portuguesa
". 3008 pages, Editora Objetiva,Grande Dicionário Houaiss da Língua Portuguesa
Description and history of the book in the Editora Objetiva website. Accessed on 2012-12-18. one of the major reference dictionaries for the

. The dictionary, which he started compiling in 1985, was completed and published (with more than 220,000 entries) only after his death, in 2001. The Antônio Houaiss Institute was created in 1997 to continue that work.Instituto António Houaiss
site. Accessed on 2012-12-27.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Houaiss, Antonio 1915 births 1999 deaths Brazilian people of Lebanese descent People from Rio de Janeiro (city) Brazilian lexicographers Hoauiss, Antonio Translators to Portuguese English–Portuguese translators 20th-century Brazilian translators Ministers of culture of Brazil 20th-century Brazilian male writers 20th-century Brazilian writers 20th-century lexicographers