So last week they apparently handed out the fifth Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud International Award for Translation.
On paper this sounds like a hell of a big deal -- five times $200,000 ! -- but when they can't even be bothered to name the winners in the (English-language) press release (despite that being titled: 'The awards handed over to') it begins to look a bit fishy.
Coverage in, say, Arab News is more extensive, but also doesn't reveal the winners' identities
Meanwhile, at Quantara.de they print a translation of the Süddeutsche Zeitung report on the ceremony in Berlin -- as, 'According to Werner Bloch, it was a bizarre event' -- in Big Words, Big Prize-Money.
For all that impressively big prize money, Bloch also reveals that even that might not be all that it seems:
On paper this sounds like a hell of a big deal -- five times $200,000 ! -- but when they can't even be bothered to name the winners in the (English-language) press release (despite that being titled: 'The awards handed over to') it begins to look a bit fishy.
Coverage in, say, Arab News is more extensive, but also doesn't reveal the winners' identities
Meanwhile, at Quantara.de they print a translation of the Süddeutsche Zeitung report on the ceremony in Berlin -- as, 'According to Werner Bloch, it was a bizarre event' -- in Big Words, Big Prize-Money.
For all that impressively big prize money, Bloch also reveals that even that might not be all that it seems:
Hartmut Fähndrich, one of the best translators from Arabic into German, was awarded a prize in Casablanca three years ago. Only a fraction of the prize money he was supposed to have shared with an Arab colleague has arrived so far.Strange indeed.