Comments on English and Arabic

That whole translation thing used to be something the State Department did. It allowed people to get to know us on a more than superficial level.

The Cato Institute, I believe, does the same thing. At the Reason.com convention last year, one of the presentations was from a group that a) quoted the same "translated into Spanish" factoid and b) is working on exposing as much Western thought to the Arabic world as possible through translation.

It's a great way to start to penetrate the intellectual wall around some parts of the world, diversity of opinion, etc.

Is the same thing being done with arabic works into English? Seems that a two way street is necessary to make this worthwhile.

Why not just teach more Arabs to read foreign languages?

Good job, England. Glad to know that fascism isn't just our problem.

imagine the shock when arabs discover that the enlightenment passed them by & their religion is medieval.

why, they might overthrow their corrupt monarchs & establish democracies based on liberty, egality, and fraternity!

yep.

So 100 books is going to make up for a thousand years? Right.

There already ARE Arabic books being translated into English -- far more every year than the other way around. There's much less of it, of course; the Arabic intellectual atmosphere is nearly dead.

That's not Abu Dhabi. That's Dubai, complete with the wonderful Burj Al Dubai Hotel.

Oooop -- I mean Burj Al Arab Hotel. The Burj Dubai is the new "world's tallest" skyscraper going up there...

It's not exactly our job to translate English literature into the Arabic language at taxpayer expense. Really, it's not our fault that hundreds of millions of Arabs with untold billions in petroprofits have zero interest in us or the rest of the world. (Maybe a new reality show would go over better, say, instead of "The Bachelor," "The Honor Killer"?) And yet, for some reason, people here in the U.S. beat themselves up over the fact that Arabs don't give a shit about us. WTF??

Forgot to say that I wonder whether Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses" was one of the 100? Well, whether it was or wasn't, maybe translation into Arabic is less a panacea than the source of the next fatwa.

@5 right on... I guess you don't have to carry a gun to be a bully- not that British coppers haven't shot the
"wrong guy" on occasion, too... probably thought they had Banksy, and were gonna get a medal.

@10 I only wish that "hundreds of millions of Arabs with untold billions in petroprofits have zero interest in us or the rest of the world..."- but that's crap. The oil $$ is in very few hands... & the ones that it IS in have a fair grasp of the West... especially since they invest a lot of that money on Wall Street (& bonds here & there). The ones who don't know don't have the money, either- nor the media- but al Jazeera helps some in that regard. Really, if "taxpayer expense" is a major parameter, I'm sure that a week's worth of Iraqi war outlays will cover plenty of translations- AND distribution expenses- and do an even better job of "winning hearts & minds" (like 'we' wanted hearts & minds?.. or just the oil?).
Re@10 sure- "The Honor Killer" might do well... in India & Pakistan... if you can get a distribution deal... ^..^