Despite the Egyptian people's admiration of Japan's achievements, copying the Japanese experience in Egypt is not on the agenda of state institutions, whether governmental or private, due to poor translation from Japanese to Arabic, according to the director of the Japan Foundation in Egypt, Masakazu Takahashi.
"The translation from Japanese to Arabic is not large, so the Foundation supports translators to translate several books," Takahashi said.
He explained that Japanese people are very interested in the Middle East and want to know more about the Arab culture. He added: "There are more books that have been translated from Arabic to Japanese than from Japanese to Arabic, because a large number of Japanese people study Arabic, and because there are a lot of research papers through which the Japanese can get enough information about the Middle East."
Maher al-Sherbiny, a professor of Japanese language at Cairo University's Faculty of Arts said, "Translation is the key to progress for any country. Arabs and Muslims progressed because they studied foreign languages and Europe progressed because of the translation of Arabic books to European languages."
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
