JEDDAH — Bringing together scholars and specialists in translations, linguistics, literature and culture, the English and Translation Department at Effat University held the first English and Translation International Conference on Wednesday. Sanna Dhahir, head of English and Translation Department at Effat University, said the main objective of the conference, which carried the title “The Cultural Impact of Language and Translation”, is to bring together scholars and specialists who are eager to share their expertise. She added: “We are also aiming at increasing our research and this conference is an opportunity to share research ideas with audiences from different parts of the world. “It's very important to us at the university.” Dhahir translates books from Saudi women novelists such as Badriya Al-Bishr and Raja Alem, as she believes there is a market for them in the West. She added: “Unless it is controversial, if the novel has a very stimulating plot then it will have an audience in the West.” The conference keynote speakers include Michael Hoey, a professor of English at the University of Liverpool (UK) since 1993. Giving a presentation on “A Faithful Translation: Lexical Priming, Corpus Linguistics and Translation of the Qur'an”, Hoey presented a new theory of language called “Lexical Priming”, which argues words differ from each other in two languages in more ways than previously assumed. He added: “According to psychological research we store language in our heads exactly as we receive it and then we process that. So words in two languages may differ in many ways such as in textual position, connotations, semantic associations, the kinds of genre styles they appear in and other ways as well.” For example, the word “day” in some Qur'anic contexts means the Day of Judgment or the Day of Retribution, different to how the word is used in everyday English. Saudi Arabia is reported to the world from mostly American media, said Hoey, who believes in public cultural diplomacy and that more work and research should be done to be able to understand cultural differences. He added: “It's absolutely essential to understand each other's cultures and beliefs and listen carefully to what each has to say and not assume that we know everything about each other. “We need to become multilingual people as we can choose ourselves what to read and what to take in.” Other speakers included Abu Baker Bagader, Deputy Minister of Culture and Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at King Abdulaziz Univeristy; and Basil Hatim, professor of translation at the American University of Sharjah.
