As a kid I lay in bed equally comfortable with Ibn Battuta and Enid Blyton alike. I just wish I’d had more Arabic choices back then.

A fair made of stories

The 45th Sharjah International Book Fair ran from 4 through 15 November under the theme “Made of Stories”, with the Sultanate of Oman as Guest of Honour. Organised by the Sharjah Book Authority, it gathered 3,212 publishers and exhibitors from 126 countries, more than 1.7 million titles and some 1,500 cultural events.

Forty-five years in the making

SIBF was founded in 1982 with a handful of publishers, when the book-fair concept was new to the region.

By its 40th edition it had grown into a cultural destination: the 2019 fair drew a record 2.52 million visitors, 2,000 publishers from 81 countries and books in almost 200 languages.

Its Publishers Conferences (what most publishers mean when they say they were at the SIBF) has since helped regional publishers move beyond local markets through translation-driven, internationally oriented lists.

Translation carries the soul, not just the words

For Lebanese-Brazilian translator Dr Safa Jubran, working between Arabic and Portuguese, translation must preserve cultural and political meanings that direct equivalents cannot capture. Dr Sana Darghmouni, who has translated Mahmoud Darwish into Italian, argued that translation challenges exoticised representations of Arab societies, placing Arab experience within a shared human framework – while cautioning that publishing priorities and commercial expectations still shape which titles travel.

Who carried Arabic literature abroad

Moroccan critic Dr Mhamed Dahi traced how Naguib Mahfouz reached French readers through Arab intellectuals educated in the West and Orientalist translators alike – figures fluent in both cultural foundations and target literary traditions. Haitham Hussein, the Kurdish-Syrian novelist and translator, added an inconvenient truth: excellent English translations of accomplished Arabic works often fail to reach readers at all.

The View From The Beach

The panel’s message is commercial as much as literary. Translation is only the first link in a chain that includes acquisition choices, awards-driven discovery, marketing investment and critical engagement. With Omani participation at the fair showcasing manuscripts dating to 1137 AD, the region is asserting a long literary continuity; the task for publishers is to ensure translated voices are not only acquired but seen, reviewed and bought.

On a personal note, being British I’m fluent in only one language, “Inglish” (many TNPS readers might even argue with that) and my familiarity with Arabic literature came from two sources: Arabian stories retold for kids in English, by British authors that cared little for the poetry of language and loved stereotypes, and translated works of Arabic scientists and explorers. As a kid I lay in bed equally comfortable with Ibn Battuta and Enid Blyton alike. I just wish I’d had more Arabic choices back then.

This post first appeared in the TNPS LinkedIn newsfeed.