• Transfer of Others’ Knowledge and Disciplines

Transfer of Knowledge and Disciplines

The transfer and translation of the knowledge and disciplines of foreign civilizations into Arabic, through the creation of public and private translation institutions and the publication of a number of translated books in the areas of thought, politics, modern sciences, literature, etc., is a positive sign worth commending and support, which reflects some sort of awareness of the need to catch up with the world’s ideas, innovation and knowledge.

In the light of recent translations, this sign, however, requires thinking to identify the obstacles and weaknesses which delay the achievement of its results and objectives.

To begin with, prominent Arab institutions involved in translation are worth highlighting. These include the Kalima (Word) project of Muhammad Bid Rashid Al-Maktoum Foundation in Dubai, the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, and the National Translation Center in Egypt, with its ambitious project the National Translation Project Series , which organized an international conference on translation in Cairo last month attended by a large number of prominent Arab translators and thinkers and orientalists interested in Arabic literature and arts, in addition to Arab Unity Institution in Beirut, and other bodies.

As far as Kuwait is concerned, the Babtain Foundation has its own translation project, in addition to the series and periodicals published by the National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters, such as" The World of Knowledge", " World Creative Works" and the " World Culture" magazine.

Added to the above are the publications of Arab publishers and a number of translation centres and institutions in the Arab world and elsewhere.

This increased activity is a genuine effort which needs to be encouraged and highlighted as it is a positive sign of the desire of Arab officials and cultural institutions to restore their progress and catch up with contemporary human civilization. However, such effort is facing a lot of problems, obstacles and resistance in terms of attitudes, human resources, administration and marketing.

Obstacles and Problems

Despite the intense translation activity which we are all aware of, it, against the ideal level, shows that Arab cultural institutions are still short of funds, as translation projects need a lot of costs: foreign publishers copyrights in the age of intellectual property rights, special budgets for translators, printing, publishing and marketing expenses. Arab authorities should therefore allocate special translation budgets. Support bodies and cultural development and investment funds are also required to allocate part of their budgets to serious and institutional translation projects.

The standard of some translations and translators leaves much to be desired due to the long lack of awareness of the importance of translation as an effective means to identify other cultures and catch up with the world’s knowledge. Cultural institutions are therefore required to allocate part of their budgets to the training of good translators. That can be carried out through cooperation between the ministries of culture and education to raise the standard of foreign language teaching at the colleges of arts, education and translation and encourage the learning of different languages. Cooperation is also needed between these educational institutions and academic institutions in the source countries to improve the academic standard of the learners and make a quantum leap in the standard of translators working from foreign languages into Arabic. Mastery of Arabic should also be stressed as engagement in translation requires a wide knowledge of linguistics and many disciplines, as among the common mistakes today is the fact that those who join foreign schools and universities are wholly attached to their respective language and culture at the expense of the mother tongue, unaware that in this way they lose attachment to their culture and language which are basic ingredients of their identity.

Moreover, language teaching colleges should establish special translation departments offering state-of-the-art teaching programmes by qualified academics specialized in translation education and training.

A qualitative change in translators

The qualitative change in the standard of translation should emulate that of contemporary Arab translation pioneers, such as Sami Aldorubi, Munir Baalbaki, Deraini Khashaba, Abdelghaffar Mekkawi, Abdelrahman Badawi, Afif Demashqiya, Fuad Zakaria, who were deeply cultured and made translations of a very high standard based on a thorough knowledge of the source language and not theoretical knowledge of synonyms, in addition to a full command of Arabic and linguistic knowledge which enabled them to translate the spirit of the original text with the highest level of honesty and efficiency, and a high level of culture, the quality of any eminent translator.

A critical remark about translation projects at Arab level is the lack of a translation strategy, either in terms of field, language and culture. In other words, there are no translation priorities as far as the topics are concerned, leading to haphazard translations rather than ones marked with prior strategic planning. Under these circumstances it is natural that monitoring what is published in other languages and determining what mainly concerns us which are necessary for any institutional translation project are missing. We are, e.g., in a pressing need to translate sciences in the first place, primarily modern technology, in addition to branches of health, medicine and agriculture which are necessary for any society seeking progress and modernity. Excellent examples in this respect are the achievements of the Islamic empire at the start of the translation age when prominent scholars focused on the translation of Greek works in thought and philosophy, as well as science, medicine, agriculture, engineering and architecture, the main disciplines which the state then needed to achieve progress.

We are nearly passing through the same stage today, and therefore need to closely monitor the world’s knowledge and various disciplines to achieve progress.

A communication network

Accordingly, Arab state cultural bodies and institutions are required to coordinate their efforts across the Arab world in order to do their job perfectly and avoid waste of money and effort in the form of duplication resulting from lack of coordination. This requires the creation of a network for daily communication and coordination to achieve something in a record time that all Arabs may be proud of.

As far as the human resources aspect of translation is concerned, it is largely related to the issue of funding. To produce excellent translations, these institutions need to recruit highly qualified translators who are handsomely rewarded to ensure they are totally devoted to their work, instead of dissipating their energy to provide a sufficient income.

It is worth noting here that books which are poorly translated do harm to the author, publisher and the project as a whole. Failure to publish a poor translation is better than publishing it with its shortcomings. Poor translations have caused cultural weaknesses, including negative attitudes towards a particular author or discipline, while the problem lay in the low standard of the translation rather than the original text. As far as scientific translation is concerned, it, in particular, requires that translators receive additional training in various fields of science and specialize in a particular type of translation to ensure an optimum level of efficiency. This is necessary to provide a new generation of competent scientific translators who are able to continue the march of the pioneers in scientific translation and deal with the shortage of Arab translators in his respect. This problem is not related to pure sciences alone but it also concerns a number of other disciplines, such as philosophy and psychology and is one of the main problems in the area of translation from Arabic into different foreign languages.

Finally, a major problem which faces current translation projects is that most of them lack such marketing abilities that are necessary to promote the translated books among the target readers in the Arab world. This is not only related to the poor distribution of books and lack of a distribution network with sales outlets, but also related to the limited number of printed translations, which makes good translations beyond the reach of the target reader. Worthwhile translation projects have actually failed is achieve their objectives due to marketing and distribution problems.

Cultural projects today need new marketing and promotion ideas to match the ever-increasing number of Arabs, and youth who should be attracted to reading by all means, and translated books come first in this endeavour. It is therefore necessary to call for some sort of cooperation between these centres and organizations engaged in translation so as to set up a distribution network among all Arab countries and combine financial resources and marketing personnel with book sales outlets to run a network that ensures continued translation activity at its best.

Translation projects in Arab societies can help bring about a shift from the world of backwardness, superstition, bigotry and ignorance to a wider world which opens up the horizons of the world’s knowledge. In this way such societies may no longer suffer isolation and may feel they are part of a wider world-the international community, particularly in today s world which is witnessing a revolution in communication, through virtual communication networks and satellite channels which attempt day after day to make the world a small global village with its people coming near one another in terms of thinking values and knowledge. This also reminds us that any society which experienced a period of civilization in its history, including the rise of the Islamic empire, relied on the development or transfer of knowledge to make use of and adopt it to fulfil its ambitions.

Translation then is not a process that is isolated from other factors, but rather a serious effort to create many of the conditions for Arab progress and development which may be sustained in the long run through the promotion of the knowledge, sciences, philosophy and arts of other contemporary civilizations. This is an extremely important issue, due to its influence on Arab awareness today in understanding the real concepts of democracy, human rights, the right of knowledge and of free speech and other key ingredients for progress which we, Arabs, have no alternative but to attempt to achieve.

We hope to achieve such progress with its real, essential conditions rather than just borrow its physical manifestations and external forms and practise it in a manner that contradicts its essence, and even undermines it.

Sulaiman Al-Askary

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