Abdulla Majed Al Ali: The UAE leads the cultural movement in the Middle East, thanks to the pioneering and continuous initiatives

The National Library and Archives Concludes the Second International Translation Conference and Announces the Third Edition for the Next Year
At the end of the 2nd International Translation Conference that was held for five days under the slogan “Translation and Preservation of the Memory of the Nation: The Image of the UAE in Cultures, Literatures and World Intellectual Heritage”,  H.E. Abdulla Majed Ali, Acting Director General of the NLA, assured that the UAE leads the cultural movement in the Middle East, thanks to the pioneering and continuous initiatives in all relevant fields, including the support of translation and publishing movement around the world. He also emphasized that translation bridges will remain a link for dialogue among cultures and will spread the culture of tolerance among peoples and nations.
His Excellency pointed out that the NLA, which has organized the conference will remain a beacon of culture and a fount of human knowledge; and he thanked all participants and researchers who enriched the conference sessions and contributed to its success. He announced that the NLA intends to organize the 3rd edition of the conference next year.
At the conference’s concluding session, which was chaired by Mr. Hamad Al Hamiri, Director of the Research and Knowledge Services Department and Chairman of the Organizing Committee, Prof. Saddik Gohar, Translation Expert at the NLA, put forward the recommendations. The most prominent recommendations were holding the NLA’s translation conference annually in the presence of all participants after the Coronavirus pandemic is over, diversifying the conference topics while focusing on the latest translation studies all over the world, immediate translation of the conference activities, specifying a referred journal to publish the conference’s research and studies on paper and electronically, awarding a prize to the best research paper, hosting a famous international figure every year at the conference, creating a website for the conference and entering into partnership with active translation institutions at the international level and others.
The last session of the conference entitled “Contemporary Approaches to Translation and Culture” was chaired by the writer Fatma Sultan Al Mazrouei, Head of Historical Archive Section at the NLA. Prof. Jamal Maqableh from Department of Arabic Language and Literature in the UAE University started this session with a study entitled “Representations of the Intellectual: Various Readings and Endless Translations”, followed by a research paper entitled “Kalima” project as a Linking Point of Knowledge and Cultural Communication between Civilizations and Nations” by Dr. Mohamed Mansour El-Hoody, Lecturer of Arabic and Islamic Studies from Doha, Qatar.
Furthermore, Prof. Hassan Ghazala from Umm Al-Qura University, KSA, and Dr. Naima Ahmed Al-Ghamdi from Imam Abdul Rahman bin Faisal University, KSA, presented joint research entitled “Navigating the Linguistic, Cognitive, Communicative, Cultural and Technological Dimensions of Translation: An Integrative Approach”. After that Dr. Mohamed Fawzy Al-Ghazi from Taiba University, KSA, presented the paper “Towards an Arabic Theory of Translation: Signs and Aspirations” while Dr. Ahmed Afifi, Professor of Linguistics at Cairo University, Egypt, discussed his study entitled “The Impact of translation in Achieving Civilized Communication between Nations”. Dr. Rehab Mohamed Mustafa Darwish from Alexandria University, Egypt, concluded this session with her research paper entitled “The Application of the Transparency Theory in Translation: “The Lost Hope” Narrative as an Analytical Study”.
It is worth mentioning that the NLA’s second translation conference contained 14 sessions, at which participants presented 70 academic research papers on translation issues and their relationship with other sciences and knowledge.