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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 9 -15 November 2000 Issue No.507 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 9 -15 November 2000 Issue No.507
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Books Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Translating selves
I was glad to hear about the establishment of an annual prize for translation in the wake of the Supreme Council for Culture conference on the same subject. The General Egyptian Book Organisation too had declared its intent to revitalise the Thousand Books project, and I felt that these were all movements in the right direction.
Translation has played an indispensable part in my own literary formation, for though there were some English and French books that I read in the original, the bulk of my knowledge of world literature was acquired through the ministrations of translators.
There was a great surge of translations during the 1960s, when important books became available in Arabic almost as soon as they were published. The long and depressing decline that has been taking place since then, however, means that when I ask young authors about foreign books that are now in vogue, they know only the names of the authors and perhaps some titles. And this is not their fault, given the lack of appropriate translations.
That is why I consider the attention increasingly paid to translation to be as momentous a literary event as any in recent times.
Based on an interview by Mohamed Salmawy.© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
