Representative Adel Althaidi of the Saudi Arabian Trade Office in Taipei yesterday said he hopes a World Arabic Language Day celebration event in Taipei would help build bridges with the Taiwanese, encouraging cultural and civilizational exchanges and understanding.
The World Arabic Language Day celebration event was held at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall yesterday morning.
World Arabic Language Day is celebrated on Dec. 18 every year to commemorate the day in 1973 when the UN General Assembly adopted Arabic as an official language, Althaidi said.
Photo: Lo Pei-de, Taipei Times
The day has been celebrated every year since it was established by UNESCO in 2012, highlighting the importance of the Arabic language, he said, adding that the day has special meaning to all Arabians from all over the world.
To sustain attention on the Arabic language and demonstrate the important role that the language plays in human civilization, facilitating humanities and cultural exchanges among people of different countries, the Saudi Arabian Trade Office in Taipei is glad to participate for the first time in the National Central Library’s Taiwan Reading Festival this year, Althaidi said.
The office set up an Arabic language reading tent for children and young people at the festival, he added.
The event would hopefully allow more people to get to know and understand the Arabic language and its culture, and further enhance international communication and cooperation, National Central Library Director-General Wang Han-ching (王涵青) said.
This year is the first time the trade office participated in the Taiwan Reading Festival, establishing a reading tent and having a professional storyteller read stories from Saudi Arbian children’s books, Wang said.
The Arabic language is a medium of communication used by hundreds of millions of people around the world, and in the era of rapid globalization, respecting and cherishing multiculturalism has become a shared responsibility of all people, she said.
The National Central Library in recent years has been dedicated to expanding international exchanges and its global influence, interacting and cooperating with foreign cultural and educational institutions in Taiwan, she said.
The library has also worked with embassies of diplomatic allies and representative offices of other countries in Taiwan to hold book donations, reading promotions and other cultural events, Wang said.
It also invited officials from the representative offices to attend the annual Taiwan Reading Festival for displaying their culture and reading materials, the director-general added.
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