L N Mallick
Doha
Doha-born Asia Arif, who is currently living in Islamabad, will attend the 10th International Conference on ‘Translation and the Problematics of Cross-cultural Understanding’ to be held in Doha on December 11-12.
Asia, a student of BS in Translation & Interpretation in the Faculty of Arabic, International Islamic University, Islamabad, was born in Doha in 2005. The conference is being hosted by Forum for Arab & International Relations, Doha.
An emerging and promising eighteen-year-old translator, Asia was taught the Arabic language by using the ‘Theory of nature and practice’ in her early childhood by her father, Dr Arif Siddiq, a teacher at the Pakistan International School Qatar, which enabled her to speak classical Arabic language fluently when she had just turned three.
Asia had been the youngest university student of two universities in Pakistan. She was the first Pakistani student who did an Arabic language course from the Allama Iqbal Open University, Islamabad at the age of seven. She did Advance Diploma of Arabic from the International Islamic University, Islamabad at the age of nine.
She was also the first Pakistani child to write a book in the Arabic language at the age of just eight years. So far, Asia has authored and translated seven books in Arabic, English, Urdu and Persian languages. Recently, her book titled ‘Everlasting Wisdom’ which contained the English translation of 200 Arabic proverbs and maxims, was published in Islamabad.
Her book titled ‘Alarabiyya li kullil Atfal’ was published in 2016 in the Sultanate of Oman by an educational institution Al-Isary Group. Asia was invited along with her parents to Oman to inaugurate the book.
Asia is the only daughter of Dr Arif Siddiq who is presently working as assistant professor of translation in the Faculty of Arabic at the International Islamic University, Islamabad. During his stay in Doha (1995-2008), Dr Arif has been contributing articles in the Arabic newspapers of Qatar.
