Kalima, UAE Arabic Translation Project to Address Chronic Issue
Refa’ah Rafie’ Al Tahtawi recognized the importance of Arabic translation in achieving the Arab Renaissance and openness to other cultures. Therefore, he called for the establishment of a translation college – now Al-Alsun – to graduate translators for different languages. At the beginning of the third millennium, Arab countries, including Egypt and the UAE, realized the importance of Arabic translation in supporting the cultural advancement. Accordingly, Dr. Jaber Asfour founded the National Center for Translation, while the UAE established Kalima Center, which took part in translating large number of books.
Kalima Center was established in 2007 and is composed of a jury of 10 specialists and experts in the field of Arabic translation. The main task of the jury is to present proposals to translate valuable books and recent publications and to review the lists of books proposed for translation by international publishing houses and translators.
The main objective of the project is to address a thousand-year-old chronic problem, namely, the lack of translation in the Arab world, represented in the scarcity of excellent books translated from foreign languages into Arabic. This problem has prevented Arab readers from enjoying the works of greatest authors and thinkers.
On the UAE National Day, albawabhnews review the most important translated books issued by Kalima Center.
African Legends of Evolution
The book, written by Stephan Pelger, translated by Mousa Hamoul and published in 2005, consists of seventy-one chapters. Each chapter contains a number of legends that Africans still believe in about the origins of their kingdoms, their peoples, their tribes, their livestock, their plantations, or how they learned different crafts. These legends were originally oral tales until the westerners, merchants, colonists and later ethnographers and anthropologists, began to communicate with Africans and wrote down the same.
Euclid ‘s Dream…Journey to Hyperbolic Geometry
The writer, Maurice Margenstern, invites readers to a journey through the history of mathematics and biographies of some of its scientists, especially at the time of the discovery of hyperbolic geometry, which helped us understand the internal system of the world wide web and inspired mathematicians and artists.
Islam in Europe: Patterns of Integration
Europe is currently witnessing a debate about Islam, especially as the number of Muslims in the continent reached twenty million. The book makes a comparison, in dealing with the Islamic phenomenon, between the laws and legislation of France, Germany, England, the Netherlands, Belgium and the Scandinavian countries, as well as Southern European countries such as Italy and Spain.
Language and Myth
The book is written by Ernest Casserer and translated by Saeed Al-Ghanemi. In the introduction, the writer wonders, “What is the relationship between language and myth? If we recognize that there is a difference in how people understand the world, does this difference come from language or myth? Accordingly, which is precedent language or myth, or are both of them arising together from the same source?
