40 Books Available on Shelves across the Arab World

Dubai-UAE: 28 June, 2008 - The Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation today announced the successful translation of 117 books by world acclaimed authors in record time of less than four months, expediting the scheduled progress of its ‘Tarjem’ programme.

Around 40 of these translated works have already been published and are available at major bookstores in the Arab world.

Pursuing an ambitious target of translating more than 1,000 books in three years, Tarjem, meaning ‘translate’ in Arabic, was launched by the Foundation in February this year to stimulate high quality translation of the world’s bestsellers from various languages into Arabic.

An integral component of its culture segment, Tarjem underpins the Foundation’s overarching strategy to enhance knowledge transfer to the Arab world through promoting translation activities. It also reflects the Foundation’s aim to drive translation as a key tool to foster inter-cultural dialogue.

Demonstrating its support to translators and publishing houses, the Foundation has pledged to purchase 1,500 copies of each book that will be translated under the Tarjem programme for distribution among leading culture centres, public libraries and opinion makers across the Arab world.

With its current achievement, the Foundation has made available to the keen Arab reader books ranging from business administration and environment to literature, including Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing’s ‘Memories of a Survivor’, and former US Vice President Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.

Yasser Hareb, Vice President-Culture, Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation, said: “We are proud of this remarkable achievement, which would not have been possible without the dedication and unstinting cooperation of our partners in the Tarjem programme. In under 100 days, we have achieved the translation of almost one third of the 365 books that the Foundation is working towards accomplishing in one year.”

Including ‘The Google Story’ by David Vise and Mark Malseed, ‘The Craft of Novel’ by Colin Wilson, ‘Freakonomics’ by Steven L. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, ‘Jack - Straight from the Gut’  by Jack Welch and John A. Byrne and ‘Secrets in the Fire’ by Henning Mankell, the translated books can be also be found in leading bookstores.

Ali Al Shaali, Director of Publishing, Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation, said: “In our mission to accelerate knowledge transfer, we consider high quality translation and commitment to time as extremely critical factors; a reason why we are keen to partner with leading translation and publishing houses across the Arab world to fulfil our ambitious objective within the mandated timeline.”

With effective management considered an essential pre-requisite to development in the Arab world, nearly 50 per cent of the translated books in the Tarjem programme will deal with management related topics. While 25 per cent has been earmarked for literary titles, the remaining portion will cover a body of work related to the human sciences, history, and philosophy.