The Sharjah Book Authority (SBA) has announced that it received 2,506 applications for the 13th edition of the Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF) Translation Grant. Of these, 1,215 applications were submitted as part of the annual Professional Programme, which took place before the 42nd edition of SIBF last year.
SBA reported a 15.2% increase in approved titles for the 13th edition, with 303 books selected, compared to 263 the previous year. Among the approved works, 119 books were translated from Arabic into various international languages, while 184 were translated from world languages into Arabic.
Under the directives of His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Sharjah, the SIBF Translation Grant aims to promote Arabic and international translation. It provides publishers with grants ranging from $1,500 to $4,000 to cover full or partial translation costs.
The titles translated from Arabic into other languages included 33 books into Turkish, 19 into English, and 14 into Persian. Additionally, 10 books were translated into Malayalam, 8 into Macedonian, 6 into Portuguese and Albanian each, 5 into French, and 4 each into Greek and Romanian. Three books were translated into Italian, 2 each into Serbian, Ukrainian, and Tamil, and 1 into German.
For translations from other languages into Arabic, 71 books were translated from English, 40 from Turkish, 13 from Indonesian, 11 from Spanish, and 10 from French. Other approved translations included 7 books from Italian, 5 each from Russian and Serbian, 4 from Ukrainian, and 3 each from Armenian, Japanese, and Slovak. Two books were translated from Hungarian, and 1 book each from German, Azerbaijani, Georgian, Malayalam, Norwegian, Persian, and Romanian.
