OxBlog

# Posted 8:08 AM by Patrick Belton

MORE ON ARAB TRANSLATION: The Christian Science Monitor fronts a piece this morning on Syrian author and publisher Ammar Abdulhamid, who has founded a nonprofit translation firm called Dar Emar in an attempt to increase the quantity of Western publications translated into Arabic.

Abdulhamid has got his work cut out for him: Spain translates in a single year as large a quantity of written work as the Arab world has translated in the past millennium, according to the UN's second annual Arab Human Development Report published last autumn.

And incidentally, the combined GDP of the Arab world is less than that of - Spain.

Placed in comparison with historic Islamic civilization's rich history of translation and absorption of intellectual currents from Western and other Eastern cultures, the current Arab world pales. And brain drain has been substantial: 15,000 medical doctors left the Arab world from 1998 to 2000, and in 1995-96 alone, 25 percent of all graduates from Arab universities holding B.A. degrees emigrated, as this column by Thomas Friedman points out. The number of scientists and engineers working in research and development in the Arab world is 371 per million citizens, compared with a global average of 979 per million. And the Arab world, representing 5 percent of the population of the world, produces only slightly over 1 percent of its books - though it produces triple the global average of religious publications.

Clearly stimulating intellectual life and discovery within the region - something in which Arab emigres residing in the West have shown astounding success - is one of the first key steps for the Arab world to take in becoming free, democratic, and prosperous. And Abdulhamid's work may yet figure for historians yet to be born as one of the first movers of a second Arab renaissance.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion