WEIT translated into Arabic (and a Kindle edition)

August 17, 2011 • 4:25 am

For religious reasons, there’s a dearth of books on evolution in the Islamic world, and none, as far as I know, that recount the evidence for evolution.  But the National Center for Translation in Cairo has just commissioned an Arabic translation of WEIT; there was a slight delay due to regime change!

The book won’t be out  for a while (they have 24 months until publication), and I hope it gets disseminated to countries beyond Egypt.  It’s gratifying that speakers of Arabic get the chance to learn about evolution in their own language.

This makes 14 translations now, but this is the one that was most important to me.

I guess I forgot to announce that the book is also available in a Kindle edition, which you can buy here.

43 thoughts on “WEIT translated into Arabic (and a Kindle edition)”

  6. This is wonderful news! Very brave of the Egyptian publishers to be doing this.

    Totally understand why an Arabic WEIT holds a special place for Jerry; it’s like throwing a flare into a dark cave. Only hiccup is that there are creatures in the cave that want to snuff out the light.

  7. Woo-hoo! Conga rats!

    The Arab world carried the torch of intellectualism while the West had its Dark Ages. It’s about time we returned the flavor. Just imagine what we can do working together!

    Cheers,

    b&

    1. Wait wait wait!

      Don’t you know that in Islamic lands, non-Muslims, or dhimmis, were treated overall as second-class citizens, marked by signs to identify them (a la Nazi Germany), and generally considered inferior to Muslims?

      Does this mean that you are an apologist for Islamic apartheid?

      Or rather does it mean that a human civilization can have both positive and negative qualities, and that you are able to see the noble aspects of Islamic civilization without having to endorse all that such a civilization entails?

        1. It’s simple, actually.

          You refuse to allow the Church any possible positive effect upon individuals and history, and constantly describe it as an utterly malevolent entity that poisons and destroys everything it manages to touch, without exception. And you do this because it has done horrific things, and still does horrific things.

          I just found it curious that you can be so casual with your praise of another faith-based civilization with its own share of injustice, e.g. its treatment of dhimmis, but seem completely unable to apply the same perspective to Christian civilization.

          What YOS was trying to say on the previous thread was that all human institutions are mixed bags of good and evil, and that corruption and injustice are inevitable presences in any human organization, human nature being what it is. But it does not mean that those institutions are completely absent any virtues or positive qualities.

          That’s all.

          Any thoughts?

          1. You refuse to allow the Church any possible positive effect upon individuals and history, and constantly describe it as an utterly malevolent entity that poisons and destroys everything it manages to touch, without exception.

            What this has to do with a new translation of WEIT is beyond me, but the Church has been as much a force for evil as the Nazi party. Have individuals transcended the institution? Of course. Can you find instances of the institution not doing the worng thing? Sure.

            But so what?

            And all that’s still irrelevant to my original point, that “The Arab world carried the torch of intellectualism while the West had its Dark Ages.”

            That’s “The Arab World.” Not Islam. Not any particular caliphate. Not some imam or other. The region, generally.

            Jesus, you’d think it’d be obvious from what I wrote….

            b&

          2. Great.

            Glad to see that we agree that all human institutions are mixed bags. It just seemed that you had a kneejerk opposition to the mere mention of anything positive the Church had ever done, such as establishing universities, supporting the sciences, and so on. It seemed hypocritical for you to be able to appreciate the positive intellectual impact of the Islamic world, even though it had its own sources of human rights abuses in its treatment of non-Muslims in general, while being unable to extend the same courtesy to the Church.

            Just one point of contention, though. When you make a distinction between the Arab world and the Islamic world, what exactly do you mean? Do you mean that during the medieval period, there was a part of the Arab world that was not dominated by Islam, and that this part was responsible for sustaining the intellectual fruits of the ancient world, and adding to them, as well? It seems to me that the Arab world WAS part of Islam, and that there is no separation of the two. Of course, I am excluding parts of the Islamic world, such as Asia and Africa, and focusing upon Spain and the Middle East, but even the latter were Islamic in any sense of the word.

    2. Ben Goren

      “The Arab world carried the torch of intellectualism while the West had its Dark Ages.”

      Many people forget or do not know this. Thank you for posting this thoughtful comment.

  8. I guess the next thing we need a translation of WEIT into American English so places like Louisiana can learn about evolution.

    What … that translation already exists and we still have a Louisiana law that allows for teaching “intelligent design” in public school classrooms?

    And a Louisiana Governor with a biology degree from Brown who supports intelligent design in spite of what he learned in college?

    :^(

  9. And after my snarky comment about conditions in Louisiana — congrats for the new translation being published.

    I’m hoping that it will change some minds.

  10. Congratulations!

    On a partially related note, is there any danger of your book being released in e-book format for Kindle?

      1. Yay!! I’ll buy the Kindle version! Stuff i’ve bought so far for Kindle has been worth less than the price, however discounted. Yours, Jerry, worth 2x!

        1. You can buy a new copy of the paperback edition for less money than the Kindle edition sells for. Amazon is so annoyed by the price they have to charge that they’ve added a note stating that the Kindle price was set by the publisher.

      2. That’s a great start – unfortunately I’m in the UK and can’t use the US store! Who do I have to talk to to get them to stock the Kindle version in the UK store too?!!

        1. See HERE for instructions on how to buy a US-only Kindle book from your UK locale (or anywhere else)

          ** To clear your browser cookies see HERE & look in the link that corresponds to your browser & browser version

          ** Also on the UK Amazon you can click a link on the left asking Amazon to push for a Kindle edition. I have done so because I need a couple to load onto Kindles I’m buying as xmas presents. But NOT at the current crazy price of more than the hard cover. Insane.

          1. Thanks for the tip. I’ve spoofed my address to buy books not available over here before, but I try to avoid it as I’m not sure how much Amazon disapprove/turn a blind eye. May have to do it for this one though!

  14. Wonderful news. I hope it goes through. I will be interested to see the cover.

    On the face of it the ToE should have an easier ride under Islam, compared with Christianity, because there are no Islamic young-Earthers & Muslim deniers have only recently started to borrow ID from the xians.

    It would be really something if Cairo could soon be a venue for sceptic conferences

  15. That is fantastic news!

    Here’s a quote that really helps put into perspective how important this is:

    Forty-six Muslim countries combined contribute just 1 percent of the world’s scientific literature; Spain and India each contribute more of the world’s scientific literature than those countries taken together. In fact, although Spain is hardly an intellectual superpower, it translates more books in a single year than the entire Arab world has in the past thousand years. “Though there are talented scientists of Muslim origin working productively in the West,” Nobel laureate physicist Steven Weinberg has observed, “for forty years I have not seen a single paper by a physicist or astronomer working in a Muslim country that was worth reading.”

    I copied this quote from the following very interesting article (whose authorship I have no personal connection to):

    http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/why-the-arabic-world-turned-away-from-science

  16. According to your posting on October 8, 2010, there were then 10 completed translations of WEIT, plus Arabic on the way. That makes 11. What are the other three?

    Here are other languages important for translating WEIT, with approximate number of speakers drawn from Wikipedia:

    1. To cover the Islamic world’s major vernaculars:

    Farsi (39 million); Urdu (with Hindi, ~400 million); Malay, including Indonesian (180 million); Bengali (~200 million)

    2. Important European languages not listed on October 8, 2010:

    French, German (~100 million each; Russian (150-200 million)

    3. The major literary languages of India: Hindi, Punjabi, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil.

    4. In Africa, Hausa (~30 million) is a distinct possibility.

    1. Here’s my list of translations:
      Arabic
      Chinese
      Finnish
      German
      Greek
      Hebrew (Israel)
      Italian
      Korean
      Polish
      Portuguese
      Romanian
      Russian
      Slovenia
      Spanish

      I would love to see a Hindi/Urdu translation, as well as French, just because I love France.

  17. Jerry, as an Arab myself, an ex-Muslim and an atheist, I’m absolutely delighted that WEIT is to be published in Arabic, it really is wonderful news.

    There is a truly miserable dearth of Arabic books and other publications with such high academic standard such as WEIT on evolution. This is a great shame as the number of Arab speakers are estimated to be as high as 400 millions in the world, with tiny fraction of them having high enough English language skill to be able to comprehend the more difficult concepts as written in English.

    The only fly in the ointment for this fantastic news is the fear that WEIT might be (probably will be) banned in the more conservative Gulf and other states, as this cowardly practice is rife there due to the influence of powerful religious groups over censorship. The ability to download the a digital format of the book might be more effective method in overcoming this problem.

    I run my own Arabic blogg where I try to promulgate the ideas of evolution, and I will certainly be spreading the word in the secular Arabic blogosphere about the impending translation the book.

    Congratulations to you Jerry and to the Arabic readers.

    1. This comment was one I had hoped to see: an atheist and Arabic-speaker commenting on the publication and possible censorship. Events in Tunisa, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria make me hopeful that now is the time for WEIT in Islamic countries.

  18. Congratulations, Jerry. I imagine it will be banned or removed from many libraries once it starts getting distributed, but if (when) that happens, maybe you can pull a Vonnegut. A few weeks ago Slaughterhouse-5 was banned from a high school library in Missouri and, as you probably know, the Vonnegut Foundation’s reaction was to offer to send the book for free (in a plain wrapper) to students of the school district who requested one. The foundation also solicited (and apparently received) donations to make this possible.
    It is a great idea….

  19. It’s gratifying that speakers of Arabic get the chance to learn about evolution in their own language.

    Congratulations, but don’t underestimate the power of censorship for physical media. The Saudi kingdom prohibits the study of evolution and teaching evolution was opposed at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology by the clerics.

    Have you had any discussion of the distribution model? It would be remarkable if your book were shelved outside of a tiny handful of specific bookstores in Cairo and Beirut.

    Because of these realities, I’d encourage you to find some way to make available a digital version of the translation on this site. Universally available internet and Unicode readers make this an attractive option.

  20. Good luck with the Arabs, I expect it will mostly mean a dramatic rise in the amount of Islamic hate mail you get, but a few will no doubt find enlightenment.

    But Kindle, now that’s really good news. Due to economic and space constraints I have said a vow to buy only e-books henceforth (it was getting ridiculous around here with books piled everywhere) unless necessity absolutely compels otherwise. Thus I have not read this tome but now I can. YAY. \o/

  21. “Malay including Indonesian (180 million)”??

    That’s like saying “Australian English, including American English”.

    And 180 million is miles too low.

    The Indonesian population these days is closer to 230 million; then add Malaysia’s 27 million to that.

    If you want to reach Muslims they’re major target, not an afterthought.

  25. That is GREAT news!!! I’ve been anxiously waiting for the arabic translation of your book for such a long time. I was actually wondering if it was that difficult to publish the book through tranditional channels, why not just do it online. I don’t expect you making any substantial profit from selling the printed Arabic translation, so I thought it might be a good idea to also consider publishing it online for free. Adnan Oktar has translations of his books in Arabic all over the place in the Middle East, online and in libraries for free. It’s such a shame there is very very little material on Evolution in Arabic. That’s why I’m going to major in Evolutionary Biology here in the US and hopefully write my own books on the subject in my first tongue, Arabic, in the future. For the meantime, I’m really excited that finally your superb book is going to be available in Arabic and I can’t wait to read it again in my first language and give it to friends. I’m pretty sure it will get scanned and distributed online in certain Arabic forums as soon as it comes out, which I’m pretty sure you don’t mind. But 12 months is too long and if you consider maybe publishing a kindle or online version in Arabic earlier would be awsome!

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