East-East/South-South Translation Support

A pervasive structural feature of globalization is that flows of information tend to occur predominantly in one direction—from the countries of the wealthy “core” (the West or the North) to the “periphery” of poorer countries in the East and South. Although South-South or East-East exchange of knowledge may often be of far greater social and intellectual value, economic and infrastructural factors make such exchange difficult. This is most obvious in the mass media, but it is also the case in more specialized forms of communication such as journal and book publishing.

The OSI Information Program helped to address this imbalance by providing selective support for East-East or South-South translations in situations where there was a severe need. Through the Next Page Foundation, OSI provided limited and carefully targeted support for translations and publishing. The funding was provided in two regions: the Arabic world, and Eastern Europe across the new “EU divide.”

The aim of the Arabic translation project was to promote thinking and discussion in the Arabic-speaking world on open society issues outside of an Occidental framework, by supporting translations of books related to themes such as pluralism, secularism and religion, human rights, governance, civil society, and democracy in the context of underdevelopment and globalization. Funding was focused on making available in Arabic some of the best work by thinkers from contiguous countries and regions such as Turkey, Iran, and the Indian subcontinent.

The "EU divide" project provided partial funding for translations among the languages of Eastern Europe. The Information Program also supported a smaller, long-term project to develop Romani-language publishing.

The Translation Project launched in 1994, then was spun off as the Next Page Foundation in 2001. The Information Program's funding in this area ended in 2008.