Manager of the Al Hikma House for Culture, Media and Translation in Beijing, and Chinese affairs and cultural expert, Ahmed Al Saeed, recently revealed that book sales in China exceeds one billion books each year. Citing 2015 figures as an example, he stated that China published 367,000 new titles that year, 3,663 of which were children’s books.
In a seminar on translation held on the side-lines of the Cairo International Book Fair (CIBF) 2017, Al Saeed noted that Arabic books are rarely translated into Chinese for different reasons, mostly financial. He added that the Dar Al Hikma is the first Arab publishing house in China specialising in translations and copyrights.
Established in 2011, Dar Al Hikma comprises 37 translators from 5 Arab countries who translate 50 Arabic books each year into Chinese. Al Saeed has also set up Dar Al Hikma for Arabic Language, which is the region’s first approved training centre in Northeast China to teach Arabic and train translators.