Dr Alessandro Columbu, Senior Lecturer in Arabic at the University of Westminster, has won the Sheikh Hamed award for translation, which is given every year for the best translation from English into Arabic.
Dr Columbu was presented with the award at a ceremony in Doha, Qatar, on 12 December. The international prize aims to honour translators and acknowledge how the skill can bring people from across the globe together. Increasing cross cultural communication is at the heart of the award, as it strives to develop international understanding between Arabic and other languages worldwide.
Dr Columbu applied for the award in July 2023, sending his translation of a collection of fifty-nine Arabic short stories written by the Syrian short-story writer Zakaria Tamer. The original title of this book in Arabic is al-hisrim (الحصرم), meaning Sour Grapes, and was first published in Arabic in 2000.
He started translating the stories in 2016 when he was reading for his PhD and added them to his doctoral thesis. During his studies he met one of his old students, Mireia Costa Capallera, and together they continued to translate the collection.
About the short stories, Dr Columbu said: “As someone who has studied it extensively, I consider this book to be one of the best by this author, in particular in the way it deals with the relationship between the sexes, as well as intergenerational conflict. These stories provide very accurate descriptions of certain conflicts that take place inside families, not necessarily Syrian or Arab families, but all families. This is what caught my attention when I read this collection for the first time.”
He added: “We are honoured and excited by this achievement which rewards us for years of study and work. Awards like this are an extraordinary incentive to continue on the path of learning foreign languages and translation - a bridge between peoples and cultures.”
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