Knowledge is Power

Translation project to bring cream of foreign writers to Arabs

Books by Stephen Hawking, Umberto Eco, Haruki Murakami and other star writers past and present have been chosen as the first works to be translated into Arabic, in a major initiative to widen access to foreign literature.

The Abu Dhabi-based project, Kalima ("word" in Arabic), aims to publish 100 books in its first year and 500 titles a year by 2010, it announced yesterday.

The first 100 are from 16 languages, including Greek, Japanese, Swedish, Czech, Russian, Chinese, Yiddish, Italian, Norwegian, Latin and ancient Greek. Half the candidate titles are English.

Four years ago the UN's Arab human development report identified a lack of translated foreign works as an issue restricting Arab intellectual life. The UN report noted that Spain translates in one year the number of books that have been translated into Arabic in the past 1,000 years.

"The rest of the world enjoys a wealth of domestic and translated writing, why should the Arab world be any different?" Karim Nagy, Kalima's Egyptian chief executive, said as the first titles were announced. "We can start putting Arabic readers back in touch with great works of world literature and academia, and begin filling the gaps in the Arabic library."

I think its rather wonderful, the translation of seminal books into Arabic. I can't think of a better way to encourage true free thinking, better than dropping bombs. Its a peaceful method, we just don't stop to consider alternatives, instead rushing into war because the Ann Coulter's or LGFers of the world masturbate over violent death of people with a different skin colour or religion.

Books, tv, radios, if you wanted to bring a regime down to it knees, those three tools would suffice, less bloody than war thats for sure. Ok so its a slower way but it creates a much better outcome, you only need to see Iraq to see how bombing the shit out of a place does no good at all.