ABU DHABI, UAE, April 10 /PRNewswire/ —

- Success of Translation Initiative Reflects Growing Interest in Arab
Market

Kalima, an initiative with a mission to revive translation in
the Arab World, will be unveiling three new titles at the London Book Fair
(April 14 to 16).

The Abu Dhabi based initiative will be part of the Arab World
Market Focus at this year’s fair which will see all eyes on the opportunities
to do business with the Arab World.

International and UK publishers and literary agents want to
gain a foothold in the rapidly expanding Arab World market which in the UK
alone saw exports to the Middle East/North Africa increase in 2006 by 13.3ACIORFIPROCENTE
to total GBP91 million, the largest increase from any region of the world,
according to the UK Publishing Industry Statistics Yearbook ((c) PA 2007).

“Kalima means business when it comes to filling gaps in the
Arabic library and we are working with publishers from all over the world to
achieve that goal. We have already completed nine titles despite only
launching late last year,” says Karim Nagy, Chief Executive of Kalima. “It is
great that publishers are now recognising the opportunities in the Arab
world. Organisations like Kalima can help the international publishing
industry access this largely untapped market of 300 million Arabic speakers.”
At its official launch last November, Kalima announced a list
of the first 100 candidate titles to be translated and published in Arabic,
with the following titles now completed:

- Il Segno (The Sign), Umberto Eco

- The Halo Effect, Phil Rosenzweig

- The Future of Human Nature, Jurgen Habermas

- A Briefer History of Time, Stephen Hawking

- Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami

- The Arab Roots of Capitalism, Gene Heck

Including these three new titles:

- The Clash within Civilizations: Coming to Term with Internal
Conflicts, Dieter Senghaas

- The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, Allan
Greenspan

- The Fundamentals of Language, Roman Jakobson, Moris Halle

The Pickup, Nadine Gordimer; Islamic Science and the Making of
the European Renaissance, George Saliba; The Great Code, Northrop Frye;
Rasmus and the Vagabond, Astrid Lindgren; The Double Helix, James D. Watson;
The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright; are also coming out soon as Kalima
titles.

The 100 titles list has been carefully designed to strike a
balance between different literary genres, juxtaposing the works of classic
authors with more contemporary writers.

“Publishers have understood for some time that the Arab world
is a massive and largely untapped market - but have not had the opportunities
to gain a foothold there,” says Emma House, Exhibition Manager International
Development, The London Book Fair. “The Arab Market Focus at the London Book
Fair will give publishers not only an overview of how to break into the
market but also the chance to build business connections with potential
partners in the region.”
Note to Editors:

About Kalima

Kalima - “word” in Arabic - is a non-profit initiative
launched in late 2007 and seeded by a grant from the Abu Dhabi Authority for
Culture and Heritage, which aims to fund the translation, publication, and
distribution of high-quality works of classic and contemporary writing from
other languages into Arabic.

Throughout Europe’s “Dark Ages” and until the end of the first
millennium, Arab scholars and libraries led the world in producing and
preserving knowledge by translating into Arabic works of science, medicine,
philosophy and the arts. Since then, however, very few foreign works have
found their way into Arabic - producing a gap that Kalima aims to close.

For media enquiries contact:

Demi Kazasi
demi.kazasi@ketchum.com
Tel: 44(0)20-7611-3689

Anouck Leuwenkroon
anouck.leuwenkroon@ketchum.com
Tel: 44(0)20-7611-3547

Kalima