Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation, International Understanding nominations' screening completed

The Board of Trustees of the Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding Saturday announced that the Steering Committee of the Award has completed the preliminary screening process for nominations, which were submitted for the award in its eighth season for the year 2022.

The spokesperson for the Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding, Dr. Hanan Al Fayyad, said that the Award Steering Committee received, this year, a number of nominations of individuals and translation institutions from Qatar, Spain, Jordan, Emirates, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, Kuwait, Germany, Morocco, United Kingdom, United States, Italy, Turkey, Tunisia, Niger, South Africa, Sultanate of Oman , Syria, Palestine, France, Canada, Lebanon, Libya, the Netherlands, Egypt, New Zealand, Romania, Indonesia, Tanzania and Kazakhstan.

Dr. Al Fayyad explained that the highest nominations came from Turkey, followed by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Morocco, Iraq and Jordan, pointing out that the nominated works featured various fields of human sciences, including: Islamic studies, literature, philosophy, social sciences, political sciences and history.

Al Fayyad added that the award ceremony of the Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding will be held on Jan. 29, on the sidelines of the Forum Arab and International Relations , slated for Jan. 28 and 29, 2023.

With total prizes of USD 2 million, the 8th edition of the award has adopted the Turkish language as a main language, after English. The Award Categories are: Translation from Arabic into English; Translation from English into Arabic; Translation from Arabic into Turkish; Translation from Turkish into Arabic; and the Achievement Award in English and Turkish, the two main languages in addition to the categories of Achievement Awards in translations of selected languages from and into Arabic, namely: Romanian, Kazakh, Swahili, Bahasa Indonesia, and Vietnamese as sub-languages.

Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding was founded in Doha, Qatar (2015). It is an international prize run by a board of trustees, a steering committee and independent panels of judges.

The Award seeks to honour translators and acknowledge their role in strengthening the bonds of friendship and cooperation amongst peoples and nations of the world. It hopes to reward merit and excellence, encourage creativity, uphold the highest moral and ethical standards, and spread the values of diversity, pluralism and openness. The Award also aspires to inculcate a culture of knowledge and dialogue, promote Arab and Islamic culture, develop international understanding, and encourage mature cross-cultural interaction between Arabic and other world languages through the medium of translation.