Dragoman Magazine
Vol. 1
Price outside Egypt: 12 USD
Vol. 2
Price outside Egypt: 17 USD
About The Project
Our new project, the quarterly book review magazine (Dragoman – الترجمان) would be the first in its kind in Egypt and the Arab world. One of our goals is to promote the dissemination of foreign cultures from areas which are nearly not-well-known to the Arab readers.
The first edition of (Dragoman – الترجمان) will appear digitally July 15, 2023. We plan to issue a print edition of the magazine. A suitable portion of the magazine content would be in audio form to serve visually impaired people in the Arab world, whose number according to the World Health Organization (WHO) statistics ranges over 23 million people in the Eastern Mediterranean Region, of whom 5 million people are blind.
In addition to Arab readers, the reviews would provide Arab publishers with sufficient information about certain books and facilitate contacting with right-holders to publish them into Arabic. The main and only condition to review a book is that it encourages critical thinking and not mythological one, which might be (as we believe) an important reason of backwardness of Arab culture.
In this context, the magazine would include fiction and non-fiction books. A percentage between 20-30 of each edition would be dedicated for reviewing children’s books. This editorial rule could be changed when needed. (Beside the digital edition of the magazine, we plan to transform a suitable portion of its content in audio form. Also some materials (especially extracts from children books) would be published in a visual form.)
5000 (five thousand) copies of the magazine would be printed and circulated by al-Ahram, the largest distributor of newspapers in inland Egypt. Furthermore, a PDF version would be published on our website for free. Also, we’ll provide our partners who recommend books to be reviewed (like Flanders Literature, Swedish Arts Council, The Polish Book Institute and Latvian Literature Platform) with a suitable format (PDF or others) of each edition to be posted on their websites for free. (NOTE: The mentioned above literature boards have welcomed our project)
Our plan is to publish reviews of books from different countries, 4-5 books from each country in each edition. A review should contain –but not limited to- the following:
- a sample translation of the book (2000 – 3000 words).
- book details (size, pages account, original publisher, rights-holder, contact person, etc.).
- an interview concerning the theme of the book with the author, illustrator or publisher.
You can View and download The first edition of (Dragoman – الترجمان) here: