DOHA: Qatar has 122 publications registered and circulated in eight languages annually, with those in Arabic accounting for 52 percent.
Official data released yesterday for the first time on dailies and periodicals in Qatar show there are five Arabic dailies and as many in Malayalam.
Malayalam is the language spoken in the south Indian state of Kerala that sends the largest number of Indians to Qatar.
The five dailies published in Malayalam locally have 1,825 editions annually — the same as Arabic, according to a study conducted by the Ministry of Arts, Culture and Heritage.
English-language dailies total four and they together have 1,460 annual issues. The study, though, does not cite readership figures.
This is a first study by the Research and Cultural Studies Department of the Ministry and the idea is to show the nature of publications in Qatar and their diversity.
English-language publications total 22, accounting for 18 percent of the total (122) while Malayalam’s share in the total is four percent. Tagalog, the language Filipinos speak, has one local daily, while there are two weeklies in Nepali and one each in Tamil, Sinhala and Urdu.
Tamil is spoken in India (in southern state of Tamil Nadu) and Sri Lanka, while the latter’s main language is Sinhala.
The Ministry said the fact that there are publications in eight languages in Qatar shows the diversity of its population.
Top on the list of the 122 publications are those of mixed type (31), some 20 of them being newspapers with 5,735 issues annually.
The remaining 11 are magazines with 96 editions a year. Business publications rank second with 130 editions in a year.
Publications dedicated to social subjects total 10 with 46 annual issues followed by children’s magazines, their number being seven with 56 yearly editions.
Religious periodicals number five with 35 editions a year. On social security issues, the number of periodicals is seven with 46 annual editions. There are four sports publications with 116 annual issues, and tourism periodicals number four (with 32 yearly issues).
The defence sector also has publications — some four of them with a dozen issues a year.
On politics, there are two publications with eight issues a year. Women’s issues are under-represented with periodicals being three, albeit with 32 editions a year.
There was only one scientific and technical journal whose frequency was annual.
Among the dailies, the share of Arabic newspapers is about 25 percent. Non-Arabic dailies being 15 have the remaining 75 percent share. If the dailies are excluded, business periodicals top as far as the nature of the publication is concerned, said the study.
Publications in Arabic total 63, in Arabic and English combined (26) English, (22), Malayalam (five) and Nepali (two). Urdu, Tagalog, Sinhala and Tamil have one each.
The ministry said the study this year was part of its national strategy for the cultural sector.
The Peninsula
