On Tuesday, July 16, 2024, the UNESCO Chair in Translating Culture at King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies (KFCRIS) with the support of Literature, Publishing and Translation Commission, hosted an online lecture entitled “Classical, Vernacular, Dead, Living: Debates about Language Reform Between Chinese and Arabic”.

The lecture was delivered by Dr. Michael Gibbs Hill, Associate Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures at the College of William & Mary. Prof. Moneera Al-Ghadeer (Holder of the UNESCO Chair in Translating Cultures at KFCRIS) introduced the Chair, the Translating Cultures Lab (TCL), and Prof. Mubarak Alkhatnai (Professor of Applied Linguistics and Translation King Saud University) who served as a moderator.

The lecture introduced the body of comparative scholarship on translation and language reform written in Chinese and Arabic during the first half of the twentieth century, inspired by the writings of Muslim Chinese thinkers who have engaged with Arabic and the Qur’an during their work in China and Egypt in the 1930s and 1940s.