ئاگۆرا ڤیژن Agora Vision

ENGLISH

An innovative company based in Silêmanî is disseminating Kurdish books digitally

In Başûr, Iraqi Kurdistan, Kurdish-language book publishing is booming. Publishers are freely bringing out thousands of new titles every year, according to Dr. Latif Hemin, an IT professor at the American University of Iraq in Silêmanî. The Kurdish library, as he calls it, is expanding rapidly, in all genres of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

Moreover, the Kurdish public is eager to read books. The last Silêmanî book fair was huge—it ran for ten days and had over 50,000 visitors, says Dr. Hemin. So publishers make sure books are easy to find—you can even buy them in supermarkets, and they’re very cheap. In the KRG, Kurdish literary talents clearly have an outlet, as a wealth of creations are finding their way from writing desks out into the world.

Or at least, out into Kurdistan. As for the rest of the world, not so much. The fact is, while it’s easy to transport physical books to Silêmanî for a book fair, they’re hard to distribute over long distances and across borders. Shipping costs are high. As a result, people outside the region have little or no access to this booming literary culture, and they may not even realize it’s happening.

Two years ago Dr. Hemin assembled a group of dedicated Sorani-speaking Kurds in Silêmanî to address this problem. They found a solution in digital technology, which allows for distribution that transcends geographic boundaries. In 2021 Dr. Hemin founded Agora Vision, a company with a mission to make Kurdish books available digitally. Geography, it turns out, need not be destiny.

The company has three product lines: Agora Deng, Agora Pertuk, and Agora Warger, for (respectively), audiobooks, ebooks, and translations.

Agora Deng: Kurdish Audiobooks

The team started with audiobooks. They developed an application for audiobooks that met international standards like those used by Audible. They called it Agora Deng and began recording books. So far they have published 90 audiobooks, totaling 350 recorded hours, and the catalog is expanding continuously with new books added on a weekly basis.

The books are chosen by a member of the team, who reviews them and makes a recommendation. Agora Vision is not aligned with any political party.

The company makes sure to follow copyright law. They negotiate contracts with the copyright owners—authors or their agents—to get exclusive rights for audiobooks.

They have several narrators who rotate. The pace of production is slow because it takes time. The final duration of an audiobook is the result of many hours of recording, editing, and cleaning. 

And they are growing on a daily basis. At this writing, in December 2023, they have contracts for more than 150 additional books in the pipeline.

The language of the audiobooks is mostly Sorani, but the company is in ongoing communication with publishers in Erbil and Duhok, in North Kurdistan, and in Istanbul, to bring more Kurmanci books to the platform.

Agora Deng is working on making children’s books available digitally as well.  Some of the books for children are narrated by the authors themselves.

The Agora Deng app is available on Google Play and in the App Store. The app has more than 5,000 subscribers who can access the growing library of audiobooks globally.

Agora Pertuk: Kurdish eBooks

The second way the company makes Kurdish books available is ebooks. This component, Agora Pertuk, uses Kindle technology. Agora Pertuk currently offers 22 Kurdish books as Kindle books on Amazon. As with Agora Deng, Agora Pertuk enables anyone, anywhere who is interested in Kurdish literature to have access.

Kurdish ebooks are a challenge, Dr. Hemin explained to the NYKCC. The diverse Kurdish languages, after all, have not only different spellings but entirely different scripts. Kurmanci reads from left to right. Sorani from right to left. Despite this challenge, Dr. Hemin is confident that digital technology can bring them together.

 Agora Warger: Translation and Publishing

The third component of Agora Vision is Agora Warger. It is the translation department, for translating works from Kurdish into English. The intention is to publish the translations both as audiobooks and as ebooks.

“It is a unique, in-house, multilingual translation system,” according to the company website, “that uses machine-aided translation backed up by talented local and global linguists. The translated materials will be published in both audiobook format and digital prints for global distribution and access.”

“A National Duty”

In the past two years, the team has grown to ten dedicated people, including an IT crew, business developers, graphic designers, editors, sound editors, administrators, and more. They have two small partnerships with nonprofit foundations. They are open to new partnerships as long as their missions align.

“Working on culture has invisible fruits,” NYKCC president Xeyal Qertel has observed. “But our mission is to plant seeds on the soil one at a time, in the hope it will be beneficial later on for us and for young people.”

Dr. Hemin agrees with this principle. “If you have a platform for movies or groceries, you will have more fans,” he points out. “But this is not a popularity contest. We are doing this for social impact—it’s a national duty. The fact that no one else is doing it this way means that it’s our responsibility. It will be a long journey but we will continue.”

For more information, please visit the website www.agoravision.com, which is available in Sorani, Kurmanji, and English.