Sharjah Book Authority Receives Record Nominations For Prestigious Translation Grant

The Sharjah Book Authority (SBA) has announced receiving 2,506 applications for the 13th edition of the Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF) Translation Grant. This includes 1,215 applications submitted during the annual Professional Programme held before the 42nd SIBF last year. The SBA highlighted a 15.2% increase in approved titles, with 303 books approved compared to 263 in the previous year.

The SIBF Translation Grant, under the directives of H.H. Dr. Sheikh Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, aims to enhance Arabic and international translation fields. It provides publishers with cash grants ranging from $1,500 to $4,000 to cover full or partial translation costs. Ahmed Al Ameri, CEO of SBA, stated, "The SIBF Translation Grant aims to further the impact of translation on enhancing dialogue among world cultures, broadening the scope of intellectual and creative Arabic content, and boosting its contribution to human civilization, honouring publishers, authors and thinkers through translating their works."

Among the approved titles for translation from Arabic into other languages were 33 books into Turkish, 19 into English, and 14 into Persian. Additionally, translations included 10 books into Malayalam, eight into Macedonian, six each into Portuguese and Albanian, five into French, and four each into Greek and Romanian. Italian saw three translations while Serbian, Ukrainian and Tamil had two each. One book was translated into German.

Translations Into Arabic

For translations from international languages into Arabic, there were 71 books from English and 40 from Turkish. Other notable translations included 13 from Indonesian, 11 from Spanish, and ten from French. The Fund also approved seven books from Italian and five each from Russian and Serbian. Four books were translated from Ukrainian while three each came from Armenian, Japanese and Slovak.

Additional Translations

Further approvals included two books each translated from Hungarian while one book each was translated from German, Azerbaijani, Georgian, Malayalam, Norwegian, Persian and Romanian.

The SBA's efforts reflect a significant commitment to fostering cultural exchange through literature by supporting diverse language translations. This initiative not only enriches Arabic content but also promotes global understanding by making a wide range of literary works accessible across different languages.

The increased number of approved titles underscores the growing interest in cross-cultural literary exchanges facilitated by the SIBF Translation Grant programme.

With inputs from WAM