The Spotlight on Rights programme, the subsidy scheme that offers copyright grants to support the translation of books into and out of Arabic, has attracted wide interest from publishers and garnered 200 publishing agreement applications at the 25th Abu Dhabi International Book Fair.

The Business Club at ADIBF witnessed numerous bilateral meetings between publishers, authors and translators to sign publishing agreements and purchase translation rights.

The programme's grants range between US$2,500 for children's and adolescent books and US$4,000 for general interest books. More than 120 publishing houses have benefited from the grants to date, and last year alone, the Spotlight on Rights approved more than 75 copyright agreements including the translations of literary works and a wide spectrum of books for children and adults from French, German, Swedish, English and Turkish.

A highly qualified board of experts will assess each application before sealing agreement on those that satisfy all conditions and requirements, particularly those that clarify the rights of all parties and the publishing permits. The board will later decide on the adopted agreements to be offered the grant.

Turkish publishers were particularly interested in the Spotlight on Rights programme and signed several initial deals to translate literary and historical titles from Turkish into Arabic. Other international publishers were also keen on translating their works into Arabic.

Launched in 2009, Spotlight on Rights has already enabled more than 600 translations for titles ranging from children's books to education, literature, history and social sciences, as well as many other areas of interest. Two of the most notable titles to benefit from the scheme are 'Mirror of the East', a research collection under the supervision of Anne Dobra and Emily Petro, published by Safsafa, Egypt, and 'Maharani's Hidden Granddaughter', by Maha Akhtar and published by Arab Scientific Publishers, the 2015 Sheikh Zayed Book Award winners in the ‘Publishing and Technology' category.
Source: WAM