Egypt’s National Centre for Translation has called on all Arab publishing houses to participate in the annual awards dedicated to translating titles into Arabic. The awards cover three areas; the Refaah Al-Tahtawi Award, valued at EGP 100,000; the Youth Award, valued at EGP 25,000; and the Scientific Translation Award, valued at EGP 50,000.
Submissions by individuals, translators and publishers, as well as cultural and scientific institutions should be entered via the council’s website, www.nct.gov.eg. The deadline for submitting five copies of the original title and five copies of the translated work is January 18, 2018. The overall value of the award will be given to the translator, who will also be given a certificate of appreciation and the council’s plaque as a trophy.
The award’s eligibility criteria stipulate that the translated work should obtain the intellectual property rights from the author or publisher of the original title; the first edition of the translated title should be published within the last three years; the translator should not be older than 40 years old in the Youth Award; and in the Refaah Al-Tahtawi Award, the submitted work should not contain references for the translation.
USA and China Dominate Publishing Revenue for 2016
The USA and China ranked first and second in publishing revenue for the third consecutive year, according to 2016 statistics. On the top ten list, the US share exceeded the overall gross of the nine other countries, with about 25 billion euros (about USD 28 billion).
China’s publishing industry revenue increased massively to 15.51 billion euros in 2016, compared to approximately USD 10.6 billion in 2015. Four European countries ranked third to sixth, namely; Germany, UK, France and Italy, while Brazil ranked seventh, followed by Holland, Thailand and Norway.
In terms of new titles per million inhabitants, the UK ranked first, producing 2,710 titles per million, followed by Iceland with 2,628 titles, Denmark with 2,326 titles, Slovenia and Taiwan with 1,831 titles each, France with 1,643 titles, Spain with 1,552 titles, Czech Republic with 1,509 titles, and Holland and Switzerland with 1,482 titles each.