From the Editors: fólio in four Languages – a Commitment to Multilateralism
Hoeing is a solitary task, but the harvest – that is shared! That is what Riobaldo teaches us, a lesson he learned from his soul brother Quelemém, in Grande Sertão: Veredas.
We recently had great news: the journal rose to the highest evaluation tier in Brazil's national academic system (Qualis A3). This achievement is a tribute to years of collective work, the confidence of our authors and reviewers, and the commitment of the UESB Journals team. It motivated us to rethink every aspect of the journal, and what you see now is the result.
A Solitary Collective Employment
Academic work is often done alone: writing, translating, revising… first and foremost – reading. These are almost always solitary acts. It is in the production of a journal, as in symposia, that we feast on shared knowledge.
The collective work drew on advice, corrections, and suggestions from colleagues and students, as well as a great deal of effort. It sought to ensure that each guideline, technical term, formal orientation, and even each metaphor resonated with the academic and principled cohesion that reaffirms and renews the ethical and contextual coherence of fólio in its almost 18 years of existence.
Why these four languages?
The Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform we use only supports five European languages. From the available options, we chose these four not by chance, but as a clear political and epistemic decision.
Portuguese, English, Spanish, and French are the main colonial languages that shaped much of the contemporary world – with all the violence and contradictions that this legacy entails. However, they are also the languages that today enable communication across continents: they reach all countries in the Americas, almost all nations in Africa, and vast regions of Asia and Oceania.
This choice means opening fólio to a comprehensive, multilingual, and, above all, multilateral dialogue – a dialogue in which different traditions of thought can meet without a single language imposing its centrality, without even the peninsula that is so often called a continent — the cradle of these four languages — serving as the privileged mediator of the knowledge we produce and publish.
We know that the horizon is much wider. Although for now we are limited to four European languages, through them we can speak to almost the entire world, or at least half of it. We hope one day to be able to include Eastern, indigenous, and native African languages. But we are taking this step with the awareness that the internationalization of a journal cannot be merely a gesture of inclusion in rankings, but rather an act of building bridges.
A final invitation
The work is not complete. Perhaps it never will be, because everything is in flux. We still need to translate internal pages, reviewer guidelines, formatting rules, and the Brazilian technical standard (NBR) itself, which will guide foreign authors in formatting their work according to our national norms.
We now invite each of you to explore the new page of the journal, to reread our guidelines, and to browse the sections now fully available in four languages.
Please report any slips to us, and share all improvements and criticisms as well.
May this renewed space continue to be a place of encounter, debate, and academic rigor — made by many hands, sustained by the trust of those who write, read, and review.
With gratitude and the certainty that the best is yet to come,
Ricardo Martins Valle
Fernanda de Castro Modl
fólio - revista de letras
April 2026
