The members of the delegation during a discussion.
Doha: A new cultural tour of the Sheikh Hamad International Award for Translation and Understanding kicked off on Wednesday by visiting Kerala in India with an aim of holding several cultural events to introduce the 5th edition of Award 2019.
The cultural tour, in which Dr Hanan Al Fayyad, spokesperson of the award, Dr Imtinan Al Smadi, member of the media team, and Riyad Al Musibli, will review the efforts of the Sheikh Hamad Award in bridging and creating means of cooperation between academic translators and the Award within the framework of its vision, philosophy and goals. During the tour, the languages selected for this year edition will also be reviewed and discussed.
The significance of this three-day tour is that Malayalam, the native language of Kerala state, is one of the languages introduced for the 5th of the Award 2019.
The Kerala team tour includes several scientific events, holding two seminars, the first at Calicut University, on translation as a bridge of human communication and message of peace, and the role of the Sheikh Hamad Award in enhancing human communication.
There will also be an open discussion with graduate students and members of the translation department at the university to review the reality of translation and the importance of the award in servicing this field of knowledge.
The second symposium will be held at the Islamic University and will discuss the intellectual and scientific impacts of encouraging translation works from and to Arabic.
The tour will also include interactive dialogues with a number of translators from and to Arabic language, as well meeting presidents or representatives of some universities, including the University of Calicut and the Islamic University and a visit to the most important publishing houses of Islamic books and meeting a number of translators.
This tour is part of a series of activities launched by the media team in some Arab and foreign countries to introduce the award and its three categories valued at $2m, in order to expand the circle of participants.
This is also to emphasize the importance of addressing the topic of translation as means of human consciousness and bridge of communication whose value is determined by the knowledge, enlightenment, and knowledge transfer to the people. The media team is seeking to introduce the Award to the Malayalam speakers and interested academics and translators.
During the first day of the tour, the media team met with O Abdul Rahman Moin, Editor of Madhyamam newspaper and a number of other editors at the newspaper, which is one of the largest newspapers in Kerala, and is also the first in Gulf countries among the speakers of Malayalam language. They also visited MediaOne television channel. Dr Abdussalam Ahmad and Abdullah Manham of Al Jamia Al Islamia were present during the meeting.
The media team gave a detailed presentation of the Award, its objectives, categories and languages. The hosts appreciated the role of the Award in selecting the Malayalam language, which is mother tongue of Kerala for this year’s edition, along with five languages in the achievement category.
The team answered many questions raised by journalists concerning distribution of financial value and standards governing the value of translated materials in its native language, Arabic and others languages.
The team also met with a number of translators in similar meetings. They met Sheikh Mohammed Karakkunnu and V Abdul Kabeer, Editor-in-Chief at the Islamic Publishing House (IPH), representing the Board of Directors.
The team also introduced to the Islamic encyclopedia issued by the IPH, which has so far reached 12 volumes, and is expected to issue another three volumes to complete the encyclopedia, and is the first major translation project to Malayalam and it includes several languages, on top of them Arabic. The encyclopedia includes information related to Islam and Muslims everywhere. The meeting was attended by Dr A A Haleem, editor of the encyclopaedia, K T Hussain, Deputy director of IPH, and Ashraf Kizhuparamba, Executive Editor of Prabodhanam magazine.
