Americana in Arabic Library Translation Project
- From: J Flenner <varney@[redacted]>
- Subject: Americana in Arabic Library Translation Project
- Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 19:08:08 -0400
http://www.globam.org/
Global Americana Institute
Library of Americana Translation Project
The classics of American thought and history have been little translated
into Arabic. Worse, even when they have been translated, they have
appeared in small editions and fairly quickly go out of print.. Worse
still, the distribution system for Arabic books is poor, and there are
few public libraries, so that many books that have been published in the
past are no longer available to most readers. We have therefore begun a
project to translate important books by great Americans and about
America into Arabic, and to subsidize their publication so that they can
be bought inexpensively. We are also subventing their distribution. We
seek funding from the general public as well as from foundations.
This project is a non-profit. We received 501(c)3 status as a charitable
foundation in December, 2005 via the Internal Revenue Service of the
federal government. All donations made to the Global Americana Institute
are tax deductible.
Supporters desiring updates on the project may join an email
announcement list at: The email list of the Global Americana Institute
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/globam/?yguid=8918122).
The project will begin with a selected set of passages and essays by
Thomas Jefferson on constitutional and governmental issues such as
freedom of religion, the separation of powers, inalienable rights, the
sovereignty of the people, and so forth.
We intend to have all the founding fathers translated--Madison,
Franklin, Washington, Paine, and so on. We would also like to see works
that treat issues in democracy and multi-culturalism, as well as
engaging histories of the United States. We cannot find in OCLC, an
electronic catalogue of over 40 million books held in participating
libraries, any Arabic translation of the major speeches and letters of
Martin Luther King or of the works of Susan B. Anthony. Eventually it
would be nice to see in Arabic a good solid book about, e.g., the
history of the American Jewish community, and other important minority
groups about which most most Arab readers would find it difficult to get
solid knowledge from the sources now available to them.
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