Book Crosses Cultural Boundaries

Book Crosses Cultural Boundaries

It is possibly the most exotic winner of a Pride In Print prize ever -- a book about Brazilian native Indians partly written in Te Reo Maori.

Texts from Brazil was awarded the best of the best in the Publication Category for Wellington’s Pivotal + Thames based on its outstanding printing, finishing and overall look.

The book was written by the Brazilian Ambassador to New Zealand, Eduardo Gradilone. He had an interest in Maori culture which he progressed when arriving here by taking lessons in the language.

When it came to writing the book about Indian culture in his own country, Mr Gradilone decided to use a bilingual approach, setting the text in both English and Maori.

Translator Ratu Tibble had to do comprehensive research as many of the words did not exist in Maori.

Judge Dickon Lentell said the judging panels had described the book as beautiful.

“You can’t fault it. It has good-looking binding and the background printing is fantastic. “The book was printed with a tint consistent throughout which is very hard to achieve.

“This was an ambitious project and a large task but they have carried it off and created a most impressive piece of work.”

With his customer also having expressed delight at the result produced, Pivotal + Thames managing director Phil Jones said he was ecstatic to have the job so highly acknowledged at Pride In Print.

“I tell you what though, if we hadn’t done so well on this, I would have given up printing -- we put a lot of hard work into this job and for the client,” he said.

“We were an offset printing business and we bought Pivotal, which was an Indigo digital printing business, and we combined. When this job was presented to us, we thought we’d print it on the Komori offset machine but decided to go with the Indigo and we produced a far superior result. Then we printed the covers on the offset press and did all of the PUR binding ourselves in-house.

“We have won Gold Medals, but this is our first time as a Supreme Finalists.

“Tonight has been amazing -- it is well organised, the sponsors, the whole thing has been great and you can’t get any better than this. That gives you a lot of hope for the printing trade.”

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