RIYADH — The Literature, Publishing and Translation Commission held the first Translation Forum in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia here on Sunday, at the headquarters of the Saudi Ministry of Education, and will continue until Dec. 3.

The Translation Forum is considered the largest translation gathering in Saudi Arabia. And has been attended by distinguished specialists to discuss issues and challenges related to the translation industry.

The Translation Forum aims to highlight the importance of translation, advance the field of translation through modern technology, stress the importance of translation to achieve social, cultural and linguistic communication among different societies, and foster ties of communication in the translation community.

Attracting translators, interpreters, and local and international associations, the two-day forum offers a comprehensive program that covers the most important topics in the field of translation. The forum includes a number of panel discussions, each day will host three sessions that address issues and challenges faced in the translation industry.

Also, it will offer 10 workshops to develop the attendees’ skills in a number of areas. Applications of Media and News Translation, Transition Project Management, Conference Interpreting, and Strategies of Critical Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Audiovisual Texts Workshop are among the workshops’ topics.

As a part of the forum's events, the first Audiovisual Translation Competition in Saudi Arabia will be held. In this challenge, teams will compete in translating short Arabic documentaries on Saudi Arabia’s cultural heritage into four languages namely English, French, Korean and Spanish. They will compete to win cash prizes that reach up to more than SR200,000.

An accompanying exhibition for local and international initiatives and associations will be a part of the forum to foster ties of communication between translators, exchange and share experiences and to connect translators with relevant bodies. — SPA/SG