An Anonymous Patron writes “One From Africa Says
The modern Arab world, it seems, doesn’t believe in Gandhi’s wisdom, and despite its importance, translation in the region remains very limited. The United Nations Arab Human Development Report 2003 gave a critical overview of the Arab achievement in the field.
According to the report, an average of 4.4 translated books per million people were published in the first five years of the 1980s, that’s less than one book per million people per year, while the corresponding rate in Hungary was 519 books per 1 million people and in Spain 920.
The report described the translation movement in the Arab world as “static and chaotic” and as lagging far behind standards in countries such as Hungary and Spain.
It is in light of this reality, and in the hope of promoting cultural exchange, that Al-Babtain Translation Center was recently founded by Saud Abdel-Aziz al-Babtain, a Kuwaity businessman and poet.”
translations and world peace?
X
Re:translations and world peace?
I have no idea why my last post ended up as an “X”!?
This was an interesting article. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was my own provincial mindset that led me to assume that these translations would be into English…makes me feel a bit like an ugly American.
It’s really a shame that our administration hasn’t put more funding towards organizations such as the one written about, rather than into military “intervention” in order to combat terrorism. I guess having just finished Richard Clarke’s book and today being the 4th, these things are on my mind.
Thanks for posting the link to the article!
Promoting ignorance?
One effect of this lagging of translation in the Arab world is the promotion of ignorance by not making available information that could benefit the Arab people by empowering them with all knowledge. This lagging of translation is probably not due to the lack of the will and desire to translate by the translators but because of the suppression by the government. If this is the case then, they cannot blame the west.