The winners of the 2019 Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding were announced in Doha on 8 December 2019. Two Arab Center publications won. Knowledge Triumphant: The Concept of Knowledge in Medieval Islam by Franz Rosenthal and translated by Yahya Al-Qaqaa and Ikhlas Al-Qananwa took first place in the English to Arabic translation category. The Philosophy of Inequality: Letters to my Contemners, Concerning Social Philosophy by Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, translated by Bassam Miqdad ranked third in the Russian into Arabic category. The books were published as part of the Tarjuman series at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies.

This award is international, supervised by a board of trustees, a committee, and independent arbitration committees. The Award seeks to honour translators and acknowledge their role in strengthening the bonds of friendship and cooperation amongst peoples and nations of the world. It hopes to reward merit and excellence, encourage creativity, uphold the highest moral and ethical standards, and spread the values of diversity, pluralism and openness.

This is the third prize that the Arab Center Books won after The Philosophy of Enlightenment by Ernst Cassirer, which was translated into Arabic by Ibrahim Abu Hashhash won last year, and the book Humiliation in International Relations: A Pathology of Contemporary International Systems by Bertrand Badie, which was translated into Arabic by Jean Majed Jabbour won two years ago.

In the context of its intellectual mission, through the "Tarjuman" series, the Arab Center seeks to make accessible to Arab researchers, high-quality contemporary works by non-Arab writers in the fields of economics, sociology, political science, management, culture and art. It also aims to contribute to strengthening its mission aimed at fueling the spirit of research, investigation and criticism in the social sciences and humanities, developing tools and concepts in order to serve intellectual advancement and academic education. The center has translated about eighty books during the past four years, and many of these books are considered canonical in the social sciences and humanities.