Arabic is spoken natively by more than 400 million people worldwide — it’s a truly global language whose impact is hard to overstate.
In our increasingly globalized world, many Arabic speakers are curious to engage with content that was originally developed in other languages. While many of these folks will go on to learn a foreign tongue, many prefer to read, listen to, or watch translations of this content in their native language. Beyond the language service industry, there are a handful of initiatives outside of our industry that have dedicated themselves to translating content between Arabic and other languages.
One example is the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington (AGSIW)’s Arabic Translation Campaign, which was launched in September 2023. Through this fundraising campaign, the AGSIW — a nonprofit organization focused on “highlighting the importance of the relationship between the United States and the Gulf region” — will collect donations to support its efforts to translate its news analysis and content into Arabic. According to the AGSIW, their translation efforts have led to a significant increase in readership from Arabic-speaking countries.
“Translating AGSIW’s publications from English to Arabic enables us to reach and engage with Arabic-speaking readers in the Gulf and around the world,” the organization wrote in a press release for the fundraising campaign. “That is why we work hard to translate as many publications as possible into Arabic each year.”
Just as Arabic speakers are interested in engaging with content originally produced in other languages, people outside the Arab world are also interested in learning about the Middle East and engaging with Arabic-language content. Initiatives like the Saudi Literature, Publishing and Translation Commission’s “Tarjim” project aim to extend the reach of Arabic content. Tarjim, launched in 2020, aims to translate contemporary Arabic writing in fields like science and reference books into foreign languages to make them available to global audiences.
These efforts — both translating into and out of Arabic — are a powerful way to share cultural knowledge with the rest of the world and bridge cultural knowledge gaps.