* Indian naval ships on friendship visit to Egypt
* Mapping translation
Indian naval ships on friendship visit to Egypt
As part of Indian Navy’s “Bridges of Friendship” programme, four Indian naval ships, the INS Mumbai (guided missile destroyer), INS Trishul (stealth missile frigate), INS Gomati (guided missile frigate) and INS Aditya (replenishment tanker), docked at Alexandria port on Monday 2 July for a three-day port call. During the visit, the Indian naval personnel have interacted with their counterparts in the Egyptian Navy, and took part in sports and social engagements aimed at enhancing cooperation and understanding between the two navies.
The visiting ships are part of the Indian Navy’s Western Naval Command and are based at Mumbai. The Task Group is headed by Rear Admiral AR Karve, the Flag Officer Commanding Western Fleet, who is sailing on the flagship, INS Mumbai.
Over the last few decades India has made substantial advancement in indigenous design and construction of warships. Indian Naval units have increasingly been deployed in recent times to address the main maritime concerns of the region, including piracy off the coast of Somalia. In addition, the Indian Navy has been involved in assisting countries of the Indian Ocean region in Hydrographic Survey, Search and Rescue, capacity-building, capability-enhancement, and Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR).
Mapping translation
Policies in favour of increasing the translation of Arabic works into European languages are essential to the promotion of cultural relations between Arabs and Europeans, according to a pioneering report produced by the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for Dialogue between Cultures.
According to an Anna Lindh Foundation press release, the conclusions and recommendations of the study will pave the way for a new Euro-Mediterranean strategy aimed at promoting intercultural dialogue between societies and strengthening a common identity based on cultural diversity.
Speaking at the official launch of the report in Brussels this week, Andreu Claret, Executive Director of the Anna Lindh Foundation, said that “improving translations between Arabic and European languages is so crucial for overcoming the clash of ignorance existing in the Mediterranean region that the European Union and the institutions of the Union for the Mediterranean should launch a long-term and sustainable programme on this issue”.
Xavier Troussard, Head of the Culture Policy, Diversity and Intercultural Dialogue Unit of the European Union, added that, “promoting translations among European and other Mediterranean languages must be a central issue for any cultural policy in this region and for the EuroMed political dialogue”.
The two-year study involved 16 partner organisations from the Euro-Mediterranean region as well as a great number of translators and researchers. The final report, entitled “A Mapping of Translation in the Euro-Mediterranean region” and carried out in partnership with the Paris-based Transeuropéennes – a non-profit association that has developed an interdisciplinary notion of translating between cultures – reveals that in the European Union today only one out of 1,000 translated books comes from Arabic. From a comparative perspective, across the Mediterranean, 35,000 books in the last 25 years have been translated from European languages into Arabic, with the majority of works having English as the main source language.
WATANI International
6 July 2012