Dr. Hanan Al Fayyad, Media Advisor to the Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding and Associate Professor at Qatar University, with other participants during the seminar.
Ibn Khaldon Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences at Qatar University (QU) in cooperation with the Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding (SHATIU), and QU Press, yesterday organized a seminar on ‘translation and its role in the promotion of human thought’.
The seminar was attended by a number of academics and those interested in the field of translation. Dr. Hanan Al Fayyad, Media Advisor to the SHATIU and Associate Professor at Qatar University, in her presentation gave detailed about the Award.
She said that the Award was launched in 2015, as an international award to honour translators recognizing their roles in strengthening the bonds of friendship and cooperation between the nations and peoples of the world.
She added that the Award also aims at rewarding excellence, encouraging creativity, promoting diversity, pluralism and openness, spreading Arab and Islamic culture, developing international understanding, and encouraging mature intellectual processes between Arabic and the rest of the world through translation activities.
Al Fayyad said that the Award also aims at honouring translators and appreciating their Arab and international role in building bridges of communication between nations and peoples, and encouraging publishing houses and cultural institutions to pay attention to translation.
Dr. Imtenan Al Smadi, Associate Professor of Arabic Literature at Qatar University, spoke about institutional support for translation as an important intellectual activity.
She reviewed the role of cultural and political institutions throughout history in supporting translation, which contributed to linking the Arab world with the cultures of others and pushing the prosperity movement to continue.
Speaking about the patterns of Arab awards for translation, Al Samadi said the Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding is difference from others as it opened doors for all languages that are incubating language for the thought and civilization of their people. Dr. Tariq Khuwaila, Head of the Department of English Literature at Qatar University, spoke about the subject of translation and cultural specificity, focusing on the methods used in the field of translation and the efforts of Qatar University in developing a database of terms used in translation to develop a method suitable for application in the field of translation.
He called for the introduction of a new curriculum content using the experimental approach in building databases based on psychological linguistic understanding.
He said that the curricula and researches in the field of translation currently pay attention to the translator and the text, while neglecting the psychological perception of translation by the recipient.
Dr. Abdulqader Fidouh, Director of Research Projects at Qatar University Press, reviewed the efforts of the publishing house in the service of the local publishing movement. He pointed out that the Press seeks to bridge the gap between the local culture and the culture of the others.
During the second session of the seminar, the well-known Tunisian Thinker and Translator Dr. Abu Yarub Al Marzouki gave a lecture on ‘Translation and the Problems of Intellectuals’. He addressed the most important experiences and researches in the field of translation, and the history of translation.
Dr. Abdulkader Bakhoush, Professor at Qatar University, commented on Dr. Marzouki’s lecture questioning on the impact of the different reception of Arab culture on Western culture symbols and their trends on Arab culture.
