In 1923, Brother George Young arrived in Brazil to establish a branch office and organize the preaching work. At the time of his arrival, only the English-language edition of The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ’s Presence (now known as The Watchtower Announcing Jehovah’s Kingdom) was available in the country. Brother Young quickly arranged for The Watch Tower to be translated into Portuguese and for a local printery to produce the magazine. As a result, the first edition of The Watch Tower in Portuguese was published in October 1923. Three years later, the branch office received a printing press from the World Headquarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A., and the brothers at the Brazil branch began printing the magazines themselves.

In 1925, two years after the first Portuguese edition of The Watch Tower was published in Brazil, brothers in Portugal began translating The Watch Tower into European Portuguese. However, in 1933, the Witnesses began facing increased opposition when a dictatorial government took power. Soon, the translation work in Portugal was halted. For decades thereafter, our brothers and sisters in Portugal relied on the Portuguese edition of The Watchtower published in Brazil. A sister named Isabel, who lived in Portugal during that time, stated: “Instead of focusing on the differences in grammar and exact meaning of words, I chose to focus my mind and heart on the message. I am deeply thankful to our Brazilian brothers for making literature available in Portuguese when it was difficult for us in Portugal to have it available in our own language.”

In 1961, when the English edition of the New World Translation became available in a single volume, approval was given to translate it into six other languages, including Portuguese. While challenging, the goal of the Portuguese translation team in Brazil was to use wording that people in all Portuguese-speaking countries could easily comprehend. For many decades, this same principle was applied when translating The Watchtower into Portuguese. However, in 2017, approval was given to translate The Watchtower into both Portuguese (Brazil) and Portuguese (Portugal).

Worldwide today, there are some 1.2 million Portuguese-speaking publishers and an estimated 260 million Portuguese-speaking people who can benefit from having The Watchtower in their own language. We pray that these and many more earth wide continue learning “about the magnificent things of God.”—Acts 2:11.