The House of Translation got off to a fiery launch at the American University premises in central Cairo, Rania Khallaf reports Under the terms of a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Culture (MOC), the American University in Cairo (AUC) and the National Centre for Translation (NCT) have agreed to set up the House of Translation HOT, a three-year translator-in-residence programme under the guidance of prominent figures in the field. The programme will consist of lectures and workshops to target graduate students and professionals who wish to advance their skills in translation research and practice. HOT will be based in the former AUC building in Tahrir Square. It was here that the agreement was signed that in one way or another reflects its spirit on the cultural organisations in Egypt, long known for its deadly routine and formal policies. "It is no coincidence that this joint initiative to establish the House of Translation is being launched at a revolutionary moment in modern history," said Samia Mehrez, professor of Arab and Islamic Civilisations and director of AUC's Centre for Translation Studies, during the signing of the formal agreement. "It is envisioned as a revolutionary space that will host and produce innovative translation projects linking various cultural achievements and legacies." The idea of the memorandum of understanding with the MOC was developed in response to a local, regional and global demand for a generation of highly skilled translation professionals. It outlines a collaborative initiative to promote capacity building, as well as the production and dissemination of knowledge in the field of translation studies and training in Egypt. Mehrez continued: "At a moment when Egypt, indeed the entire Arab World, has inspired worldwide translation of its ongoing uprisings to demand change, it is befitting for Egypt to be home to a collaborative and global project on translation that will be the locus for re-envisioning, restating and remapping discourses, theories and practices surrounding the increasingly vibrant and interdisciplinary field of translation studies and translation practice." Faisal Younis, professor of psychology at Cairo University and chairman of the NCT, said in his significant speech at the ceremony that this historic moment witnessed the first cooperation ever between the MOC and AUC. The NCT was established in 2007 by Gaber Asfour, the prominent critic and the former chairman of the Higher Council of Culture. The aim was to promote knowledge through a considerable number of high quality translations from all living languages into Arabic. Asfour's ambitious plan resulted in the translation of 1,700 books up to this year, when he resigned to take up the post of the Minister of Culture following the revolution. He resigned the post after less than a month, citing political instability in the early revolutionary period. In his capacity as an expert in the field of psychology, Younis confirmed that exposure to other world cultures is an important pillar in the creativity process. "Only last year, we started paying more attention to training translators through short term training programmes, and also giving a tangible push to translation studies in Egypt through producing translation tools such as dictionaries and digital data bases of translators and translated books," he said. "We are the only cultural organisation in the Arab world that produces one translated book every working day, which makes 240 books a year," he boasted. "However, what we are lacking is international expertise and this will be facilitated through this promising joint initiative. "We also have a big number of young translators who still need a lot of experience; a small number of well-established old translators, and then a stark gap in the middle age group of translators." He added that the tailored training programmes and workshops that this initiative entailed would help develop and balance the force of working translators in Egypt. The AUC President, Lisa Anderson, highlighted the significance of the collaboration. "For more than 90 years we have aspired to serve as a window and a two-way mirror for communities that are halfway around the world, who do not share a common language and are, in many ways, 'foreign' to each other," she said. "And yet they share common hopes and dreams, ambitions and aspirations. Like the project of translation, education itself necessarily brings people into intimate and sustained contact. This novel, and sometimes uncomfortable, familiarity will only grow in the 21st century and, as it does, both AUC and the translation project it represents will grow in importance." Mehrez added that at a time when people around the globe had constructed bridges across linguistic and geo-political boundaries and barriers, and had united around the new plural-language of Tahrir, it was fitting for Egypt to lead a project that would further espouse and champion this new idiom. The House of Translation is inspired by institutional precursors as far back as the Abbasid Bayt al-Hikma in the ninth century, Mohamed Ali's translation project during the 19th century, and Taha Hussein's initiative of Al-Alf Kitab (The One Thousand Book Project of the 1950s), and of course the current NTC in Egypt. Needless to say, Mehrez added, the House of Translation is anchored in the history of a region that has been and continues to be a crossroads of different cultures and civilisations and a hub for translation and the transfer of knowledge. It is from this historically privileged position that the House of Translation can and must aspire to a global role in the future of translation studies. Mehrez explained that this joint initiative was conceived as a translator-in-residence programme in which guest translators and researchers would conduct lectures and workshops as well as present works in progress. It will be open to faculty members graduate students and professionals worldwide, and will be home to international and multi-disciplinary projects in a wide range of languages that will open up a vast area of exciting comparative work across the boundaries of "national" cultures. This is an attempt to redress the balance of the dominant flows of translation and to establish a new geo-politics of translation theory and practice. Given the impressive experience and expertise of Egypt's National Centre for Translation, Mehrez said, those at AUC and at the Centre for Translation Studies were very fortunate to enter into this partnership. "We truly look forward to an enriching and fruitful collaborative project that will be of general benefit not just for institutions in Egypt but for many others in the region as well as in the world at large," she concluded. from top, left: Dr.Emad Abu Ghazi, Minister of Culture, Liza Anderson AUC President, Medhat Haroun (provost), and Dr. Faisal Younis chairman of NCT
