The Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) achieved the Guinness World Records™ title for the Most Languages Used in a Reading Relay when the much-loved title The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was read continuously in 55 languages.
The record-breaking reading relay was held on Wednesday, 12 October, with less than 10 seconds in between each language, taking only one hour and 19 minutes for the reading of the entire book. A total of 177 participants took part in the successful attempt, including readers, judges and volunteers.
The languages read in the reading project included Arabic, French, Spanish, Irish, English, Dutch, Romanian, Portuguese, German, Tamil, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Polish, Serbian, Kannada, Croatian, Afrikaans, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Kyrgyz, Marathi, Amharic, Bengali, Kinyarwanda, Malay, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Chinese (Mandarin), Czech, Tagalog, Greek, Hindi, Georgian, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Ukrainian, Kurdish, Malayalam, Montenegrin, Russian, Swahili, Thai, Turkish, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Urdu, Slovak, Gujarati, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Sanskrit, Kazakh, and Yoruba.
Notable dignitaries who led the reading relay included French Ambassador to Qatar HE Jean-Baptiste Faivre, MIA Director Dr Julia Gonnella and MIA Deputy Director of Learning and Outreach Salem Abdulla Al Aswad. Guinness World Records™ Adjudicator Pravin Patel oversaw the event.
Ahead of the relay, the great nephew of the book’s author and Secretary General of the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Youth Foundation, Olivier d’Agay, addressed the participants and attendees through video.
According to Al Aswad, they are absolutely delighted to have MIA achieve the Guinness World Records™ title for the Most Languages Used in a Reading Relay. He said that this achievement is a celebration and reflection of Qatar’s multicultural society and of the many languages that will be spoken during the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™.
A huge thank you to all the participants who worked together to set this record, including Qatar TV who created a perfect programme which will air on television in the coming days.
Library Head Susan Parker-Leavy and her team managed the project and worked with readers and judges to organise the event which shows the importance of reading and libraries in Qatar.
Check out Marhaba’s FREE e-Guides for everything you need to know about Qatar.
