Doha, Qatar: Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding organised an online symposium on the occasion of the International Translation Day which is celebrated on September 30 every year.
Five translators from different languages attended the symposium, presenting their visions on the role of translation as a civilizing act between nations, cultures and peoples.
Held under the title “Experiences in Translation”, the symposium also discussed the reality of the translation movement based on their personal experiences in this field, and touched on the difficulties and challenges they face during their work. Moderator of the symposium Dr. Imtenan Al Samadi said that the award seeks to honour translators, encourage them, and recognise their efforts by appreciating them on both the material and moral levels. She outlined the process of the award that Qatar presents to the world, its philosophy, goals, objectives, categories, and the eligibility criteria.
Wafa Abu Hatab, Professor of Linguistics at Zarqa University in Jordan, spoke about the importance of translation for humanity, noting that it was the will of Allah Almighty to create different tongues and languages so people can learn and get to know each other, and translation is a means for communication between nations.
She explained that translation is a cultural act in which the translator wanders between two different cultures to convey the meaning; pointing to the translator as an ambassador of culture between nations, and a mediator between two cultures.
Prof. Abu Hatab pointed to the challenges faced by translators, including the absence of the original text’s author, or finding the corresponding literary text that expresses the meaning and gives the same effect, because literature is the cultural “capsule” that contains nations’ customs and vision of life, and is full of proverbs and expressions linked to one culture and not another.
Dr. Nedelya Kitaeva, who teaches Arabic language and literature at the New Bulgarian University, spoke about her first encounter with translation from Arabic during her university study. She was hesitant to choose a specific author for her master’s thesis, but she read the poetic works of Adonis and decided to translate some of his poems.
Kitaeva explained that she was certain that she couldn’t write about a poet without immersing herself in his works. Initially, she understood only a little from his poetry; the words had mysterious meanings. However, she sensed the depth of this poetry and his latent potential, and found a description of this feeling in Adonis’s words when he spoke of a language beyond language, an image beyond the image, and knowledge beyond knowledge, she said, expressing belief that these words provide the most precise definition of Arab culture and its literature in general. That was the first challenge she faced in the field of Arabic translation, she added.
Egyptian translator Dr. Salah Helal, the Professor of German Literature and Philosophy at Ain Shams University’s Faculty of Education, noted in his remarks the need for concerted efforts in translation in the form of a huge Arab project that includes specialists from all countries and is oriented to the translation work in the Arab world. This requires political and cultural will and financial support.
Dr. Salah Helal highlighted the problem of scarcity of funding, which prevents the translator from devoting himself to his project. “If translators devoted themselves to translation activity, they would enrich the Arab library with the books we need to bring about a cultural renaissance,” he added.
Kuwaiti translator Abdul Wahab Suleiman said that blogs and social media represent a suitable medium for publishing houses to discover translation talents. There are online translator communities and hashtags to serve translators and these media are good for the translator, even though they are linked to individual and non-institutional efforts.
Abdul Wahab Suleiman said that there are difficulties facing the translator, most prominently in dealing with academic terminology. There is no unified formula for these terms and there is no translation institution that unifies the terms. Another difficulty that academic books and scientific research translators have is that scientific sources and books are not available to anyone who wants to read them for free at a time when they are indispensable for the translator to understand the context of the work. He expressed his hope for the development of artificial intelligence to be at the service of the translator and to save them effort and time.
