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SZBA Panel Discussion on 'Translation as a Tool of Cultural Exchange'

Date: April 24, 2019, 18:00 - 19:00
Location: Abu Dhabi International Book Fair

Sheikh Zayed Book Award (SZBA) organised a panel discussion entitled ’Translation as a Tool of Cultural Exchange’ as part of its participation in the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair 2019.

The panel was moderated by Claudia Kramatschek, expert in new world literature, writer and journalist and included speakers, Stefan Weidner, German literary critic and one of the most celebrated translators of Arabic literature in Europe, Margaret Obank, a British publisher, noted for her lifelong contribution to the dissemination of contemporary Arabic literature in English translation and Jan Karsten, a German editor with CulturBooks, a publisher of highly acclaimed and emerging international voices.

The panel discussed the importance of translation and provided insights into intercultural writing trends. 

 

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Moderator
Claudia Kramatschek

Claudia Kramatschek

Claudia Kramatschek is a Berlin-based critic specializing in ‘new world literature’: India, Africa and the Arab region. She regularly contributes to German public radio, the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and to the Arabic portal qantara.de, where she reports on literature and culture from the Arab world. From 2010-2013 she was a jury member for the International Literature Prize of the House of Cultures of the World in Berlin. In 2015 Kramatschek was head of the jury for the German Book Prize.
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Speakers
Margaret Obank

Margaret Obank

Margaret Obank is a British publisher known for her contribution to the dissemination of contemporary Arabic literature in English translation. She is co-founder of Banipal Magazine of Modern Arab Literature and Administrator of the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature. The Trust, which she set up in 2004, administers the annual Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation (the first prize in the world for published literary translation from Arabic to English) and the Banipal-Arab British Centre Library of Modern Arab Literature. Obank will speak about how the translation of literature – fiction and poetry – is an essential part of the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural world we live in; how the translation of literary works by contemporary authors from all corners of the Arab world into English (and other languages) makes this literature accessible to the widest possible audiences, allowing the works to take their rightful place within world literature and to speak to a global readership about the realities of Arab cultures in all their diversity and vibrancy.
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Speakers
Jan Karsten

Jan Karsten

Jan Karsten is the CEO of CulturBooks, a German independent press that focuses on young and upcoming award-winning international voices. It publishes printed books as well as e-book-only digital editions. Karsten will talk about his experience as a digital publisher, the importance of Bibliodiversity and a strong and diverse independent publishing scene, and the power of a kind of intercultural, cosmopolitical writing that transcends (and transforms) a ‘national’ literature. 

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Speakers
Stefan Weidner

Stefan Weidner

Stefan Weidner is a renowned German writer, translator, and literary critic, with a specialization in Arabic literature. In September 2019 his collection of critical essays, 1,001 Books, will be published by Edition Converso, Germany. Weidner will speak about this project, which situates Arabic literature in the context of world literature today, shedding new light onto it from the perspective of postcolonial theory on one hand and the interested Western readership on the other.

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