Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi launches Alexandria Trust Arabic translation project
London, 25 February 2015 – Emirati scholar and writer Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi has officially launched the Alexandria Trust’s translation project by committing to support the Arabic translation of the first two titles from an all new library of short texts offering analysis and critique of seminal books, across 14 disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, from all over the world.
This library is being developed in English by the Trust’s sister organisation, Macat International, and is due for public launch in 2015. Each book in the library will consist of 12 short essays on a single seminal work.
The Trust’s translation initiative aims to give access to learning and knowledge hitherto denied to those whose only language is Arabic, through the translation of those essays. The initiative lies at the heart of improving the life chances of young Arabs and contributing to their ability to gain qualifications, develop their critical thinking abilities and secure the region’s human capital for the future.
To this end, the Trust has established partnerships with the Library of Alexandria, the London Business School and the British Academy among others, and is in discussion with leading Arab publishers with a strong distribution reach.
Al Qassemi is a United Arab Emirates-based scholar, commentator and columnist whose articles have appeared in The Financial Times, The Independent, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, The New York Times as well as other notable publications. He also founded the Barjeel Art Foundation with the vision of creating a space where artwork drawn from diverse corners of the Arab world can coalesce in an interactive and communal setting.
Macat and the Alexandria Trust were both founded in 2011, Macat as a for-profit enterprise, the Trust as a charitable company. Independent of each other while sharing office facilities, the work of the two organisations, hitherto entirely separate, is now coming together around the Trust’s translation initiative.