The Board of Trustees of the Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding announced that the award steering committee has completed the initial screening process for the nominations submitted for the award in its sixth season for the year 2020, as the committee indicated that the number of entries exceeded 300 participants representing individuals and institutions concerned with translation from 42 Arab and foreign countries.
Dr. Hanan Al-Fayyad, the media spokesperson for the Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding, said in a statement today, Tuesday, that participation increased this year over the previous session in which 234 participants competed, which indicates the success of the award in achieving its mission in cultural and knowledge communication at the global level.
She explained that the names of the prize winners will be announced in mid-December, noting that the participants represented the continents of the world.
Among the most prominent countries that participated in the award this year (Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh. India, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Canada, the United States, Britain, and South Korea).
The award, which was established in 2015, seeks to honor translators and appreciate their role in strengthening the bonds of friendship and cooperation between the nations and peoples of the world, encouraging creativity, entrenching sublime values, spreading diversity, pluralism and openness, as well as aspiring to establish a culture of knowledge and dialogue, spread Arab and Islamic culture, and develop international understanding .
The value of the Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding is worth two million US dollars, and in its sixth session for the year 2020, Persian was adopted as a second main language, after English, and 5 languages in the achievement categories.
Thus, the award categories for this season are the category of translation from Arabic into the English language, the category of translation from English into Arabic, the category of translation from Arabic into the Persian language, the category of translation from Persian into Arabic, and the achievement award in the two main languages, English and Persian. As well as the categories of achievement awards in translations of selected languages to and from Arabic, which are Pashto, Bengali, Swedish, and Korean.