Under the supervision of the Dean of the College, Dr. Majid Abdul-Hameed Al Kaabi, a panel discussion was held at the College of Arts - University of Basrah, and within its cultural unity program, with Dr. Mai Abdul-Karim, Professor of Comparative Literature and the French Language. The panel discussion was entitled: “Translating the Arabic Novel into French”. In the seminar, Dr. Mai presented opinions on the problems of translating Arabic literature and the Arabic novel into French, and the standards of translation, and ended with a review of the novelist movement in France currently.

Regarding the problems of translation, she said that the most prominent of them is the absence of institutional Arab interest in supporting translation into French, as translating the Arabic novel into French is an adventure that publishing houses do not offer without guarantees or support.

One of the problems of translation in this context is that other media replace literature and novels in conveying the image of Arabs and their conditions. Also, the French reader is satisfied with Arab writers who write the novel in French, such as Amin Maalouf, Taher Ben Jelloun, and others. As well as the negative reaction of Arab culture, and those who transmit it, after the terrorist incidents in France.

Dr. Mai pointed out that the translation criteria are not specific, but depend on the conditions of publication, such as the seasons of demand for books that push publishers to increase publications, to include translation and literary prizes, and depend on literary prizes that increase the demand for winning novels and their translation. She concluded her speech by talking about the novel movement in France, pointing to the emergence of a clear interest in the novels with a political, autobiographical, subjective and altruistic fiction content.

It is noteworthy that Dr. Mai Abdul-Karim obtained a doctorate in 1987 in comparative literature from the Sorbonne University for her thesis: "Madame Bovary between its creator and one of the Arab translators: Mohamed Mandour."  The thesis got the recommendation of the discussion committee to be published.

The professor of comparative literature and French worked at a number of universities, including the University of Baghdad-the College of Languages, the University of Brussels, Philadelphia University in Jordan, and Qarinus in Libya.  She has a number of translations from French into Arabic, including: "The Imagined Orient, the Western Political Novel of the Eastern Mediterranean", by Terry Hench, published in Al Mada in 2006, and "The Flame of a Candle" by Gaston Bachelard, published by Azmina House, Amman, in 2005. She also translated into French, for example: Ali Badr's novel "Papa Sartre" which was published by Lousoy in France in 2014. 

Dr. Mai Abdul-Karim received the Award of Sheikh Hamad for Translation and International Understanding in 2017.