Its paper focuses on its initiatives and projects pertaining to translation,
The National Library and Archives participates in an international conference on translation in Lithuania
The National Library and Archives intends to participate in the International Translation Conference to be organized by the Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies at the Faculty of Philology of Vilnius University in the Republic of Lithuania, under the slogan of “Translation, Ideology and Ethics: Response and Credibility”, with a research paper entitled “Towards Promoting the Translation Movement in the Middle East: The UAE’s National Library and Archives Initiatives as a Model”. This signifies a qualitative step by the NLA towards reviewing important aspects of its national activities and achievements in international cultural circles.
The research paper to be presented by Prof. Saddik Gohar, Translation Expert at the NLA, in September 2022, aims to shed the light on the NLA’s outstanding efforts to enhance the translation movement at all human, civilizational, knowledge, social, professional, historical and educational levels.
Hamad Al Hamiri, Director of the Research and Knowledge Services Department, says  about this participation: “Translation is a means of education, dialogue and building bridges between civilizations and cultures through the ages. Given the role of the NLA in the field of translation, it becomes worthy of being presented as an ideal model in this international conference as we attach considerable importance to translation. Most of our publications were not translated into English only, but also to many other languages. Furthermore, we also translated the main international publications related to the NLA’s specializations into Arabic. This is in addition to our conferences, symposiums and lectures relevant to this field.”
“The NLA’s role in the field of translation is totally in line with the UAE’s approach as translation is deemed as one of the most critical bases for advancement, and it opens the door for all types of knowledge and sciences. Translation receives special interest in the UAE, which is evidenced by projects and initiatives that aim to promote translation.”, he added.
Moreover, the NLA’s paper tackles also the linguistic and cultural challenges and obstacles faced by translators working on various translation projects at the NLA. It focuses on machine translation issues, artificial intelligence outcomes and mechanisms and how to make use of them to support translation from foreign languages into Arabic.
In his research paper, Prof. Gohar discusses the UAE’s pioneering role in promoting the value of translation as the cornerstone of the cultural life of every civilized people. He presents the NLA as a model, highlighting the translation boom in the UAE, which strives to benefit from translation in enriching the Arab library with the best international contributions and in highlighting the UAE’s civilized image by translating the most creative Arab accomplishments into the world’s languages.
The paper points out that the translation movement in the Arab World and Middle East suffered recently from setbacks at different levels. Consequently, the NLA adopted a number of academic initiatives and endeavors, most prominently “Tarjamat” project, which enhances academic participation in conferences and supports translation movement locally, regionally and internationally. The paper also reviews the most significant international conferences, which were organized by the NLA and in which an elite of translation professors from international universities participated. It emphasized that the NLA in all its events called for a multi-disciplinary internal and academic research approach as it took critical steps towards enhancing cultural intermingling through successive translation initiatives and multilingual translation projects that aim to translate historical, heritage and cultural text from and into most of the world’s languages.
It is worth mentioning that the Vilnius University, which will organize this international conference is one of the oldest and most prestigious European universities. It was founded in 1579.