Only 10000 books translated from English to Arabic in the last MILLENIUM???

Can this number really be true? Only 10000? In a thousand years? I wonder how many books have been translated from Arabic into English in the last millenium.

A total of about 10,000 books have been translated into Arabic in the past millennium, according to a 2003 study by the United Nations Development Program. The demand has been small, partly owing to the historical tendency to focus most reading on religious texts and classical poetry.

(To say nothing of the high illiteracy rates in Arab countries)

For that reason Abu Dhabi finances translation of broad array of books.

Jumaa Abdulla Alqubaisi, director of the Abu Dhabi National Library and an adviser to the project, suggested that ultimately the project was as much pragmatic as idealistic.

"Good books are like penicillin," he said. "They fight against hate, segregation and misunderstanding."

The first books to be translated:

"...draw from history, science and fiction; Kalima is still securing the rights to most of them. More than half were originally written in English, and they include a Pulitzer Prize winner, "The Looming Tower" by Lawrence Wright, which examines the origins of Al Qaeda, as well as the best-seller, "The Kite Runner," by Khaled Hosseini. Classics in the first group of books to be translated include Milton's "Paradise Regained." A number of works by Jewish writers are on the list, including "Collected Stories" by the Nobel Prize recipient Isaac Bashevis Singer."