Visitors to the Cairo International Book Fair 2023 - Archives (Al Jazeera)

The Cairo International Book Fair is an annual tradition that is held during the mid-year school vacation, and holds cultural importance for the Egyptian family.

Therefore, many people are keen to attend it in order to spend an enjoyable time, as parents encourage their children to read by taking them with them and allowing them to explore different books that arouse their interest, satisfy their passion for reading, and develop their awareness and ability to face life’s difficulties.

The exhibition also provides an entertainment aspect for all family members, as the children’s corner - which always witnesses great demand - has pavilions selling recreational games and various educational means, and workshops to develop children’s skills and encourage them to learn differently, in addition to health care and awareness services and blood donation campaigns that encourage... Young people provide humanitarian services to the community.

The exhibition also includes many cultural events, such as book signings, seminars, and poetry evenings, which bring children and young people closer to successful models in various fields. The symposium does not have to be only cultural, as it can be special about discussing a celebrity from the world of art, literature, or sports. This greatly attracts young people and children, as they seek to ask questions and take pictures with them.

Knowledge industry

The Cairo International Book Fair, in its fifty-fifth session - which will be held from January 24, 2024 to February 6 - emphasizes Egypt’s cultural and civilizational leadership from ancient times to the present. Therefore, this session was launched under the slogan: “We create knowledge... we preserve the word.”

In this session, the great Egyptologist Dr. Salim Hassan was chosen to be the exhibition figure due to his strong mark on Egyptology through his scientific discoveries, research and books that influenced the understanding of the history of ancient Egypt and helped document the history of Egyptian civilization.

Egyptian children's literature writer Yaqoub Al-Sharouni was also chosen as the character of the children's exhibition. Due to his diverse literary works, and as one of the most prominent pioneers of children’s literature in Egypt and the Arab world.

It is also a tradition of the exhibition to choose a country as the main guest of honor for the exhibition. Norway was chosen this year with a large cultural program, which includes a group of Norwegian authors. It is a good opportunity to learn about Norwegian literature, its most prominent writers, trends and landmarks.

New exhibition

In the midst of my visit to the book fair this year, I noticed the spread of a large number of translated books. I also noticed that many publishing houses were turning to translation, which was not among their publications in previous years, especially translations of science fiction and fantasy novels. The matter is no longer limited to the publishing houses’ trend of translations of novels. Prizes only, or novels whose royalties are made freely available.

In the past, translations were limited to government publishing houses, such as the National Center for Translation or publishing houses specializing in translation. We were lucky to have Dar Nahdet Misr translate the famous American Harry Potter series. The generation that read The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter opened their own publishing houses.

He also began to search for similar works, and modern publishing houses began to translate famous novels that young people love and that achieved successes, such as novels by Colleen Hoover, Helen Prine, and Stuart Turton, or novels that were turned into films or series on international platforms such as Netflix. There are even some novels whose Arabic translation was published at the time of their original version, such as the novel “The Girl of the Emerald Sea” by Brandon Sanderson.

Inspiring process

The literary agent also plays a major role in the presence of a percentage of this large number of translated books, as he periodically visits all international exhibitions, establishes global partnerships with agencies outside the Arab world, and then returns with all the catalogs of international new releases to begin recommending them to Arab publishing houses.

As for many writers, they find translation a profitable business, to improve their income due to its rewarding financial returns, instead of literary writing, whose financial returns have declined these days. In addition to the shorter duration of translating a literary text than writing a novel, it may take several years without financial benefit.

Translation itself is an inspiring process; Reading famous international works enriches the writer’s thinking by immersing him in the translation process itself and thinking about formulations in the Arabic language to convey the original text in a way that enables the reader to understand it smoothly, as well as learning from the translation of famous novels.

Whatever the case, it is the reader’s taste that governs the spread of specific literary genres more than others, and it is the one that has the upper hand in encouraging and spreading translated novels.