The winners of the King Abdullah International Prize for Translation 2013 were announced by the Board of Trustees at a function here yesterday.
The five winners in the category for institutions will receive a cash prize of SR 750,000 each, while individual winners will get SR 500,000 each.
Deputy Foreign Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Abdullah, who is also chairman of the Board of Trustees of the International Prize and member of the Board of Directors of the King Abdul Aziz Public Library, chaired the function.
Prince Abdulaziz said translations help bring people together. “Translated works allow people and nations see what others have achieved in the fields of science, literature and arts,” he said. Translations also enrich various cultures, he added.
Prince Abdulaziz said the prize for translation in natural sciences was shared by Reem Mohammad Al-Towairqi for her translation from English into Arabic of the book “How Things Work: The Physics of Everyday Life”. The book discusses several physics topics in a new and creative way.
The co-winners were Abdulnaser Salah Ibrahim and Ali Abdullah Al-Salama for their translation from English into Arabic of the book by Michael Wilson “Bacteriology of Humans: An Ecological Perspective.”
The Translation Award for Institutions was given to the Arab Center for Arabization, Translation, Authorship and Publication (ACATAP), an organization of the Arab League's Arab Center for Arabization and Translation, which was founded in 1990 in Damascus.
According to the committee, ACATAP is known for its prolific output in translation and Arabization of higher education and tertiary education publications. Its efforts have enriched Arabic libraries with more than 130 books in 14 scientific fields.
The Award in Humanities from other languages into Arabic was jointly awarded to Salwa Saliman Naqli for her translation of Peter Stockwell’s book “Cognitive Poetics: An Introduction” from English into Arabic, and Rasha Saad Zaki for her translation of Thomas Sowell’s book “Applied Economics” from English into Arabic.
The Award in Humanities from Arabic into other languages was given to Cecilia Martini for her translation of the book “Al-Farabi: Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle” from Arabic into Italian.
The Award for Efforts in Translation for Individuals went to Joao Baptista de Medeiros Vargens, author and Brazilian university professor, and Luis Miguel Peres Canada, a Spanish university professor and author.
The Board of Trustees decided to withhold the Translation Award in Natural Sciences from Arabic into other languages because the submitted works did not meet set scientific standards.
There were six categories for the awards this year, namely, the Translation Award for Institutions; Efforts in Translation for Individuals; Humanities Translation from Other Languages into Arabic; Humanities from Arabic into Other Languages; Natural Sciences Translation from Other Languages into Arabic; and Natural Sciences from Arabic into Other Languages.