Sharjah, November 3, 2023 – Within the activities of the Sharjah International Book Fair 2023, the Sharjah Translation Award “Tarjuman” was reviewed by a panel of academics and translators during an enriching session on translation and experience. Demonstrates its role and the extent of its contribution to global translation efforts and highlighting Arabic creative and intellectual production.

German translator Lucian Lettis opened the session by expressing his delight at winning the Sharjah Translation Award (Tarjuman) for the Swiss publishing house he serves as director: “I have been successful in translation for over 45 years. The Tarajuman Award is like a sincere and honest word of thanks to me… A big thank you to Sharjah.

In turn, Sofi Al-Bustani, professor of modern Arabic literature at the National Institute of Oriental Languages ​​and Civilizations in Paris, said: “I always talk about the financing of EU translation projects and the Leila Society for translating Arabic literature. European languages, but I would like to point out here that Sharjah’s support for the Tarjuman prize and the translation of Arabic literature into all languages ​​of the world “he surpassed all.”

To the question (Why do we translate?) the Italian translator Isabella Camera Davilito said in her answer: “In the eighties of the last century, when I began to study Arabic literature, I found in Italy a great indifference to the creation of the Arabs. I felt that the West had built a wall between itself and the creativity of the Arabs, so I decided that day to break down this wall.” By translation, I must know what is happening on the other side of the Mediterranean, and my people know. The Sea The first novel I translated was Ghazan Kanafani’s (Men in the Sun), which at the time was the first modern Arabic novel to be translated into Italian.

Spanish translator Luis Miguel Cañada addressed the question: Why translation? Translation is the antidote to the immortality of literary texts, the untranslated book is silenced as the final text. Regarding the criteria for selecting a work to be translated, Kanada says there are several choices to be made. The translator, and other times the publisher selects the works and gives them to the translator, but ultimately the publisher decides, what will be translated?

The great German translator Hartmut Fendrich, who introduced Germans, Swiss and other peoples of Europe to Arabic literature through dozens of Arabic novels translated into German, spoke about the role of translation in expressing various human emotions and individual thoughts. Literary works.