Dr Hanan Al Fayadh
The deadline for entries for the Third Edition of the annual Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding is approaching near, as August 31 is the last day for accepting for nominations for the 2017 edition.
The award aims to honour translators and acknowledge their role in building bridges between nations and people around the world. The award has three categories; the first is award for translation, second for achievement and third for international understanding .
The total value of the awards has been doubled from $1m to $2m and several new languages have been included, said Dr Hanan Al Fayadh, the Award’s Media Consultant.
The translation category has four subdivisions translation prizes from/into Arabic and English, and Arabic vs French with prize of $200,000 for each, said Dr Hanan.
While the achievement award includes 10 sub-categories of translation from Arabic to Chinese, Japanese, Malay, Persian and Urdu and vice-versa and each will have a prize of $100,000 she added, noting that the third category is a prize for international understanding which is awarded to individual(s) and/or institution(s) with substantive contribution to building a culture of peace and promoting international understanding and its total value is $200,000.
The selection of the five Eastern languages (Chinese, Japanese, Malay, Persian and Urdu) has come in line with the goals of the awards to encourage translation between Arabic and these languages, encouraging individuals, publishing houses, Arab and international organisations and institutions to play role in creating bridges for cultural dialogues and communications between the people, Al Fayadh stressed.
In regard to the terms and condition of the nominations, Al Fayadh said the nominations at present are limited to the humanities and the social sciences and submissions can be made by individuals or institutions (publishing houses, research centres, translation institutes, university departments, etc.).
Only one translated work is allowed for nominee who must be living at the time of the nomination and institutions can nominate up to three translated works by three different translators.
The conditions also included that the translation works under the first category must have been published in the five years prior to the announcement date of the award while achievement categories are not subject to time limitation and can be awarded to a set of works/achievements of a lifetime.
Any of the award winners are not allowed to take part in the nomination of the award again before the passage of five years.
The Award was founded in 2015 with the aim of contributing to improvement of quality of translation from/into Arabic based on excellence, accuracy and cognitive and intellectual value. More information can be obtained from official website of the awards (www.hta.qa/en).
