I wrote about the Meedan Project just a few weeks ago. The site has been launched, and although the translations are not brilliant, they are readable and make sense.
Meedan had originally planned to use the Worldwide Lexicon (WWL) project's open source system, but right now we're using IBM's Machine Translation engine and the IBM Transbrowser" -- a browser-based tool for creating a translation layer on the web.
Meedan's data -- its 'translation memory' of over 3m words -- is available to other translators. George Weyman, Meedan's content and community manager, says: "the translations that are done with the Transbrowser are part of our agreement with IBM that makes sure all those translations are open source."
The 'translation memory' is important because having a corpus of texts in two languages allows you to apply statistical techniques to improve a translation engine. The whole translation memory is downloadable from http://github.com/anastaw/Meedan-Memory.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/
Showing posts with label Arabic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arabic. Show all posts
Sunday, April 04, 2010
Arabic Kaput in the Gulf?
Hard to believe, but it seems that it could be true. In United Arab Emirates, 80% of the population are expats, and Arabic is trailing behind English and Hindi in the fields of business, finance and education.
Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait are all in the same boat, with governments bewailing poor Arabic language skills on one hand, and funding higher education in English on the other. Is that a smart move?
Blame is also placed on the primary and secondary education, with students arriving in uni incapable of writing in any language whatsoever.
To read more, visit the Global Post.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/
Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait are all in the same boat, with governments bewailing poor Arabic language skills on one hand, and funding higher education in English on the other. Is that a smart move?
Blame is also placed on the primary and secondary education, with students arriving in uni incapable of writing in any language whatsoever.
To read more, visit the Global Post.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/
An Introduction to Literature in Arabic
L.D. Mitchell (book collector, professional librarian, author, photographer) did everyone a great favour by posting a ten part introduction about the literature in Arabic that any serious reader should have on their shelves.
Given the enormous debt that Western Europe owes to Arab scholarship, it is puzzling why the Arab world's own native literary traditions remain so poorly known and understood in the West.
I have written often about contemporary Arab writers whose works are being translated into English (Humphrey Does It Again, Darwish Celebrated in Film, Arab Literature Breaks Taboos - in Translation, On Translating Arabic Literature, Taha and Adina - Translating the Other, From "Religion Dispatches" - Translating Rumi], but Mitchell takes us on a journey from 1001 Nights to Naguib Mahfouz, touching on folklore, religious texts and science, then stopping long at poetry, moving on to compilations of Jahiz, Maqdisi and the globe-trotter Ibn Battuta, biographies of the Prophet and other greats, Ibn Khaldun's seminal work on sociology and the histories of Tabari.
Mitchell says that his mini-introduction would not improve the general ignorance of the subject much, partly because of the frustrating lack of English translations. rest assured, my dear librarian, that there is a similar frustration among the Arabic-speaking generation Y and Z who no longer use classical Arabic and cannot comfortably link to Tabari, Ibn Battuta or Jahiz. Modern translations from 7th-12th century Arabic to Modern Standard are either non-existent, or very few and far between. Add to that high levels of illiteracy, censorship, and rote-learning. I read my first 1001 Nights in Burton's translation, not in the original Arabic, although the whole set was adorning our bookshelves when I was growing up.
What books in Arabic get to see the light of the English presses also depends on which political buttons are pushed, as Youssef Rakha writes in his article "A literary prize fight: politics and the International Prize for Arabic Fiction".
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/
Measures to Protect Arabic in ME Media - and what it means
(MENAFN - Kuwait News Agency (KUNA)) Media figures and field experts called Wednesday for protecting the elements of the Arabic language, as a basis for the region's identity and culture.
Participants in the seminar on 'The Role of Media in Serving the Arabic Language', held by the Arab Center for Educational Research for the Gulf States, said in their recommendations at the conclusion of the three-day event that classical Arabic should be used in official letters and communication between government bodies.
Moreover, they called for making the Arabic language a primary subject taught at all school levels, and to make it compulsory in all mass media colleges, whether in public or private universities.
It also called for selecting editors based on their competence in the language, and for media institutions to coordinate efforts to create programs that focused on the Arabic language.
It also encouraged making children's programs in classical but simple Arabic.
The event saw the participation of media figures, as well as language experts and representatives of education ministries from around the Arab world.
What this means is that if you have been dealing with the Arab Gulf countries, or you are planning to, you will meet with more stringent demands on having your transactions (legal, business, financial) done bilingually, if not fully in Arabic. And because the mood in the Gulf has been very "linguistically and culturally sensitive" over the past few months, cutting corners in the quality of your paperwork by using online translation tools or bilingual non-specialist might just land you in more trouble.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/
Participants in the seminar on 'The Role of Media in Serving the Arabic Language', held by the Arab Center for Educational Research for the Gulf States, said in their recommendations at the conclusion of the three-day event that classical Arabic should be used in official letters and communication between government bodies.
Moreover, they called for making the Arabic language a primary subject taught at all school levels, and to make it compulsory in all mass media colleges, whether in public or private universities.
It also called for selecting editors based on their competence in the language, and for media institutions to coordinate efforts to create programs that focused on the Arabic language.
It also encouraged making children's programs in classical but simple Arabic.
The event saw the participation of media figures, as well as language experts and representatives of education ministries from around the Arab world.
What this means is that if you have been dealing with the Arab Gulf countries, or you are planning to, you will meet with more stringent demands on having your transactions (legal, business, financial) done bilingually, if not fully in Arabic. And because the mood in the Gulf has been very "linguistically and culturally sensitive" over the past few months, cutting corners in the quality of your paperwork by using online translation tools or bilingual non-specialist might just land you in more trouble.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Get a Piece of That Cake, Quickly
Is your company doing business with the Arab world?
The Google CEO, on a visit to Riyadh, predicted that the Kingdom would have a bright future because of its large young population. He said the Arabic content on the Worldwide Web was expanding by the day. "The Internet Arabic content will increase further due to the presence of a large Arab population estimated at 300 million," he said, adding that Saudi Arabia would have a big role to play in expanding Arabic content on the Internet. According to statistics published in 2009, 48 million Arabs use the Internet.
Google International has two offices in Egypt and Dubai but no presence in any other Arab country. It has introduced Arabic language in its search engine and provides translation services from different languages to Arabic. But be careful - Arabs are very touchy about their language. After all, the language is sacred because the Koran came down in it. So Google-type mess of machine translation is a very sure way of making unhappy and offended clients.
If you are doing business with the Arabic-speaking world, it is time to localise at least the most important parts of your website NOW. For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at www.arabic.com.au .
The Google CEO, on a visit to Riyadh, predicted that the Kingdom would have a bright future because of its large young population. He said the Arabic content on the Worldwide Web was expanding by the day. "The Internet Arabic content will increase further due to the presence of a large Arab population estimated at 300 million," he said, adding that Saudi Arabia would have a big role to play in expanding Arabic content on the Internet. According to statistics published in 2009, 48 million Arabs use the Internet.
Google International has two offices in Egypt and Dubai but no presence in any other Arab country. It has introduced Arabic language in its search engine and provides translation services from different languages to Arabic. But be careful - Arabs are very touchy about their language. After all, the language is sacred because the Koran came down in it. So Google-type mess of machine translation is a very sure way of making unhappy and offended clients.
If you are doing business with the Arabic-speaking world, it is time to localise at least the most important parts of your website NOW. For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at www.arabic.com.au .
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
"In Fact"
Another freelancer not to be added to my list of potential contractors:
Dear sir:
In fact I am a freelance translator from Yemen (Arabic native speaker)who has a university degree in translation and English literature. I can translate from English to Arabic. I have three years of experience. And I am doing my master degree in Transaltion . In fact I am wondering if I can join your team as afreelance from- home transaltor; I won't take much ( 25$ per 1000 word). Being ready to take such fees doesnot mean that I am not a good translator, for you can test this yourself. Iwill send you My C.V and a sample of my translation once I get a reply.
wish you contaced me.
Faithfully,
MM
(a) I am no Sir - he didn't do his research
(b) 25 bucks per 1K words does not inspire confidence, neither do his typos. Maybe he types 1K words per 25 seconds?
(c) Since he wished I contacted him, he obviously was aware it was a mere wish - in fact, he only stayed in my inbox long enough to be blogged here.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
Dear sir:
In fact I am a freelance translator from Yemen (Arabic native speaker)who has a university degree in translation and English literature. I can translate from English to Arabic. I have three years of experience. And I am doing my master degree in Transaltion . In fact I am wondering if I can join your team as afreelance from- home transaltor; I won't take much ( 25$ per 1000 word). Being ready to take such fees doesnot mean that I am not a good translator, for you can test this yourself. Iwill send you My C.V and a sample of my translation once I get a reply.
wish you contaced me.
Faithfully,
MM
(a) I am no Sir - he didn't do his research
(b) 25 bucks per 1K words does not inspire confidence, neither do his typos. Maybe he types 1K words per 25 seconds?
(c) Since he wished I contacted him, he obviously was aware it was a mere wish - in fact, he only stayed in my inbox long enough to be blogged here.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
Meedan Bridges Language, Culture
From Robert Lukes, Dakota
A new website was launched last month with the intention of providing a means of communication between the Arabic- and English-speaking worlds. Meedan, the Arabic word for "gathering place" or "town square," is meant to symbolize the old town squares where people would gather together and discuss community issues.
Arabic-language websites have been fairly unrepresented in the internet, but this is set to change in the near future. Vinton Cerf, a vice president at Google, estimated that the number of Arabic-speaking internet users in the Middle East will increase by 46.4 percent in the next three years, creating a great opportunity for increased communication between people across the planet.
The method for this breakthrough is a computer translation program that translates articles, blogs, and comments into the language of the reader. This automated translation is augmented by a team of experts and reader contributions-not unlike Wikipedia-to fix any inaccuracies in the computer translation.
In this way, Meedan intends to break through the familiar narrative of conflict between peoples. Through creating an online community, the people behind Meedan hope to bring the people into direct communication with each other. Much has been said about the gap in understanding between the English-speaking world and the so-called 'Arab street.'
More information, can be found at news.meedan.net.
I just hope they don't start some war by using translation software for this praiseworthy project.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
Humphrey Does It Again
From the Egyptian Al Ahram, no. 985, 11 - 17 February 2010
Injy El-Kashef
"Piles of publications by the American University in Cairo (AUC) Press were displayed outside the Oriental Hall on Monday 8 February, proudly bearing the name of Banipal Award winner Humphrey Davies, whose translations include Naguib Mahfouz' Thebes at War, Alaa El-Aswani's The Yacoubian Building, Ahmed El-Aidi's Being Abbas El-Abd, Mohamed Mustagab's Tales From Dayrut, Gamal Al-Ghitany's Pyramid Texts, Khaled Al-Berry's Life Is More Beautiful Than Paradise, Ahlam Mosteghanemi's Chaos of the Senses and Hamdy El-Gazzar's Black Magic. Inaugurating the second in AUC's In Translation series of lectures, professor of Arabic Studies and director of the Centre for Translation Studies, Samia Mehrez explained that the Centre's ambition is to go past "inter-lingual" into "inter-semiotic" translation in order to generate the greatest possible exchange for the benefit of an ever-growing community of intercultural readers.
The second distinguished guest at the series, Humphrey Davies was introduced not only as the prominent translator who has delivered some 15 outstanding works of Arabic literature to English speakers, but also as the "audacious" man who gave up promising careers that his doctoral degree from the University of California and his employment at Non-Governmental Organisations operating in Egypt, Palestine, Sudan and Tunisia would have facilitated. "I love words for their own sake," commented Davies with charming self-awareness, asserting that his ultimate choice of a career in translation has, despite possible odds, allowed him to "pay the bills, put bread on the table and go on vacations. I definitely encourage a career in translation for those who have the same passion for words."His first published translation, in 2000, appeared in Banipal -- it was Sayed Ragab's short story Rat, in Egyptian Arabic -- affording Davies the first "bread" from his burgeoning career as a translator. The hook, however, had presented itself three years before, in the form of an extremely ambitious project that both "confront[ed] me with many tough translational issues, and [became] addictive, and encouraged me to try my hand at making a living from translation and allied skills," he is quoted in Banipal. The work in question was the "preparation of a critical edition, translation and lexicon of an Egyptian work of the Ottoman period, Yusuf al-Shirbini's Hazz al-Quhuf bi-Sharh Qasid Abi Shaduf (Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abu Shaduf Expounded)". He became "manic" about words, and so "confident" in the certitude of his ardour that he did not "feel the risk" inherent in turning translation into a career, especially as the post-9/ 11 world and increasingly globalized international community made translations from Arabic a commodity in much higher demand than it was 20 years ago.
Davies' allure as a person, in fact, partly lies in his loyalty to his inner beliefs -- which seem to have repaid him, in time, for his keen self- perception and devotion. It all began with a "mid-adolescence crisis" which erupted when he realised that he "hated" both English literature and his presence among the throngs who were enrolled in its study. He needed a subject with a "more intimate atmosphere [and so] took a leap into the dark" -- a student of English literature among hundreds, he became one of the four enrolled in the study of Arabic language at Cambridge. From then on, the need to engage with the Arab world became increasingly pressing -- the driving force being "putting oneself in others' shoes," especially as further study of the language yielded an awareness of its unfathomable complexity and richness.
Although he initially envisioned the option of translation in short-term goals, stumbling upon the English translation of Marcel Proust's A La Recherche du Temps Perdu irreversibly internalised Davies' notion that a translation can be a great work of literature in its own right. Although he had "never taken a creative writing course in my life [and] never written a primary work of literature in English," Davies, consolidated in his profound mastery of both colloquial and classical Arabic, began translating the works that he personally esteemed to be of artistic value, as a reader. When asked to define what he viewed as "artistic value", this man of "instinct", seemingly lost for words to explain what he perceived as obvious, shrugged while attempting to clarify: "artistic value is... it's what turns you on". As for the reader he has in mind while translating, Davies' answer was witty, truthful and simple: "Someone well educated, highly cultured... someone like me." On numerous occasions Davies managed, effortlessly, to extract laughter from the audience -- his modest, yet secure, demeanour so engaging that the evening was as fluffy on the soul as it was dense on the mind.
The role of the translator vis-à-vis both the text and the author were extensively addressed, breaking with the image of the translator as someone cloaked in invisibility, living in the shadow of the author. Although Davies took this opportunity to congratulate AUC Press on their respect and appreciation of the role of the translator, evidenced in their placing the latter's name on the cover of the book, he still asserted, "invisibility is a relief for me," clarifying that he has "a preference for what I might call 'deep meaning' and 'function' over surface and form." What continues to test this particular translator is the increasing tendency of modern Arabic literature for "free and direct speech, in which the text flows in and out of tense without any particularly referential context. Tenses are slippery in Arabic," he says, adding, "punctuation conventions in [a state of] flux". The often weak state of copy editing adds to the mix of challenges he struggles with. "When you call the author to ask him if he meant 'put his feet on the bath' or 'put his feet on the path', you really feel like an idiot," he chuckles.
Is his relationship with the text one of submission or control? "Submission," he replies. "The sort of question that goes through my head while translating is, what does the author really mean here and how would I say it if I were using English?" The historic debate on "domesticating versus foreignizing translation" is, according to Davis, one the "most fascinating, complex and important issues in translation theory... I give it no thought." Other considerations that have no bearing on Davies are issues of gender and politics -- I've Had Enough by Effat Yehia being one of only two works by women translated by him. "In don't think in these terms," he explains. "My only consideration is finding the book artistically compelling." Nor does he feel he should be shouldering the responsibility for canon formation; "it would be presumptuous of me to believe that I would have an impact on forming the canon. The canon will form itself."
Every single author, ultimately, will present the translator with challenges, be they "intense lyricism, helter-skelter rushes in streams of consciousness or unfamiliar slang that may be unknown even to the readers of the original language." Can any work of literature be untranslatable? "I philosophically don't want to believe that. There is no such thing as a book that cannot be translated. There are only texts that haven't found their translators yet."
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
Darwish Celebrated in Film
From the Daily Star
The late-Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish was one of the towering figures of late-20th century Arab cultural production. Among Palestinians, Darwish’s stature was unrivaled.
Recognized as one of the great Arabic-language poets in living memory, he was also an
unreconstructed nationalist with a long record of critically minded activism within Yasser Arafat’s PLO.
To follow his decades of output is to find poetic expression of the urgency of Palestinian militancy and the accumulation of Palestinians’ despair and anger at the ineffectual political classes that have claimed to represent and support their right to retain possession of their ancestral lands.
Straddling the worlds of art and politics, it’s no surprise that Darwish has cut such a heroic figure in the cultural life of his countrymen – whether they reside in ’48 Palestine, the Occupied Territories or among the Palestinian exile community.
His poems are memorized and recited by elementary school children, set to music and performed by Arab artists throughout the MENA region and have been translated into 30-odd languages, including Hebrew. From time to time, Darwish’s work is adapted to film.
“As the Poet Said,” the latest feature-length film by Lebanon-based Palestinian documentarian Nasri Hajjaj, is one of the more ambitious efforts to bring Darwish’s poetry to the rest of the world through film.
The premise of the film is simple, setting out to take the audience on a tour through the poet’s life. Accompanied by Darwish’s work, Hajjaj takes the camera to some of the places the poet lived in the Middle East and Europe. The journey is linear but in execution the project is
multi-layered. The filmmaker has assembled a distinguished group of colleagues, friends and admirers to participate in the tribute.
Several Palestinian poets – Ahmed Dahbour, for instance, and Dalia Taha – are augmented by cast that include Nigerian writer, poet and playwright Wole Soyinka, dissident Israeli poet Yitzak Laor, Iraqi Kurdish poet Sherko Bekas, American Michael Palmer, Lebanon’s Joumana Haddad, former French Prime Minister (and, it seems, poet) Dominique de Villepin and a troupe of school students from Sidon’s Ain al-Hilweh camp.
The camera (wielded by Jocelyne Abi Gebrayel) captures this cast of characters in a dozen or so different locations, within Palestine, around the Middle East, in Africa and Europe, places loyal to the memory of the poet and to which the poet was loyal – his favourite room in Paris’ Madison Hotel, for instance. Whether by design or happenstance, many of these locations are in a state of repair, or disrepair – an abandoned railway station, a university auditorium filled with scaffolding, an abandoned theatre.
For the most part each setting affords these figures an opportunity to read lines of Darwish’s poetry. They do so in several languages – Arabic, of course, but also English, French and Kurdish.
The poetry can be interpreted in other terms as well, of course. A weighty piano piece, composed and performed for Hajjaj by Lebanese composer Hiba al-Kawas, opens the film and is revisited throughout. This pounding score is augmented by the work of harpist and composer Tara Jaff, and dancer Lorca Sbeiti can be seen navigating various derelict spaces at certain points in the work.
The effect is to testify to the wide range of people that have been moved by, or at least exposed to, Darwish’s words. This approach gives the film an oddly selfless aspect, since Hajjaj’s cast is given so much latitude to interpret Darwish’s work in his or her own terms.
Moving literature between genres is challenging work. No few lines of film criticism have complained about how some hack scriptwriter or director has tried to adapt a much-loved novel or short story to the screen and made a hash of it. If adaptations of prose works to film are hard to pull off, translating poetry to film is inestimably more difficult. It has been amply demonstrated that the shooting and editing of moving images, whether proper film or digital video, can be “poetic.” It is difficult, though, to approximate the impact of written poetry – the resonance of words and their breadth of meaning within individual readers – even within
other languages, let alone in visual media.
Filmmakers are still compelled to try. One compulsion, presumably, is the desire to secure increased exposure for the poetry, liberating work that, if left between the covers of a book, might languish in obscurity. There is less danger of that being the case with the work of
Darwish, which is probably better known in the non-Arab world than that of any other Arab poet. The desire to free Darwish’s work from its genre, and its appeal to both filmmakers and audiences, was nicely illustrated at last December’s Dubai film festival, where “As the Poet Said” enjoyed its world premier. It wasn’t the only Darwish poem in competition.
Lebanese filmmaker Talal Khoury’s “9 August,” his second effort to render a Darwish poem on film, screened in DIFF’s short film competition. Furthermore the trailer that DIFF’s production team worked up (to project before the festival’s gala screenings) was drawn almost exclusively from a particularly effective passage of Hajjaj’s film. That sequence sees a deaf actor sign a passage of Darwish’s poetry – an avalanche of verbs the poet deployed as if grappling to depict
the complex range of feeling his lover, and country, evoked in him. Audiences invariably applauded generously. It wasn’t odd to hear the word “beautiful,” in various languages.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
The late-Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish was one of the towering figures of late-20th century Arab cultural production. Among Palestinians, Darwish’s stature was unrivaled.
Recognized as one of the great Arabic-language poets in living memory, he was also an
unreconstructed nationalist with a long record of critically minded activism within Yasser Arafat’s PLO.
To follow his decades of output is to find poetic expression of the urgency of Palestinian militancy and the accumulation of Palestinians’ despair and anger at the ineffectual political classes that have claimed to represent and support their right to retain possession of their ancestral lands.
Straddling the worlds of art and politics, it’s no surprise that Darwish has cut such a heroic figure in the cultural life of his countrymen – whether they reside in ’48 Palestine, the Occupied Territories or among the Palestinian exile community.
His poems are memorized and recited by elementary school children, set to music and performed by Arab artists throughout the MENA region and have been translated into 30-odd languages, including Hebrew. From time to time, Darwish’s work is adapted to film.
“As the Poet Said,” the latest feature-length film by Lebanon-based Palestinian documentarian Nasri Hajjaj, is one of the more ambitious efforts to bring Darwish’s poetry to the rest of the world through film.
The premise of the film is simple, setting out to take the audience on a tour through the poet’s life. Accompanied by Darwish’s work, Hajjaj takes the camera to some of the places the poet lived in the Middle East and Europe. The journey is linear but in execution the project is
multi-layered. The filmmaker has assembled a distinguished group of colleagues, friends and admirers to participate in the tribute.
Several Palestinian poets – Ahmed Dahbour, for instance, and Dalia Taha – are augmented by cast that include Nigerian writer, poet and playwright Wole Soyinka, dissident Israeli poet Yitzak Laor, Iraqi Kurdish poet Sherko Bekas, American Michael Palmer, Lebanon’s Joumana Haddad, former French Prime Minister (and, it seems, poet) Dominique de Villepin and a troupe of school students from Sidon’s Ain al-Hilweh camp.
The camera (wielded by Jocelyne Abi Gebrayel) captures this cast of characters in a dozen or so different locations, within Palestine, around the Middle East, in Africa and Europe, places loyal to the memory of the poet and to which the poet was loyal – his favourite room in Paris’ Madison Hotel, for instance. Whether by design or happenstance, many of these locations are in a state of repair, or disrepair – an abandoned railway station, a university auditorium filled with scaffolding, an abandoned theatre.
For the most part each setting affords these figures an opportunity to read lines of Darwish’s poetry. They do so in several languages – Arabic, of course, but also English, French and Kurdish.
The poetry can be interpreted in other terms as well, of course. A weighty piano piece, composed and performed for Hajjaj by Lebanese composer Hiba al-Kawas, opens the film and is revisited throughout. This pounding score is augmented by the work of harpist and composer Tara Jaff, and dancer Lorca Sbeiti can be seen navigating various derelict spaces at certain points in the work.
The effect is to testify to the wide range of people that have been moved by, or at least exposed to, Darwish’s words. This approach gives the film an oddly selfless aspect, since Hajjaj’s cast is given so much latitude to interpret Darwish’s work in his or her own terms.
Moving literature between genres is challenging work. No few lines of film criticism have complained about how some hack scriptwriter or director has tried to adapt a much-loved novel or short story to the screen and made a hash of it. If adaptations of prose works to film are hard to pull off, translating poetry to film is inestimably more difficult. It has been amply demonstrated that the shooting and editing of moving images, whether proper film or digital video, can be “poetic.” It is difficult, though, to approximate the impact of written poetry – the resonance of words and their breadth of meaning within individual readers – even within
other languages, let alone in visual media.
Filmmakers are still compelled to try. One compulsion, presumably, is the desire to secure increased exposure for the poetry, liberating work that, if left between the covers of a book, might languish in obscurity. There is less danger of that being the case with the work of
Darwish, which is probably better known in the non-Arab world than that of any other Arab poet. The desire to free Darwish’s work from its genre, and its appeal to both filmmakers and audiences, was nicely illustrated at last December’s Dubai film festival, where “As the Poet Said” enjoyed its world premier. It wasn’t the only Darwish poem in competition.
Lebanese filmmaker Talal Khoury’s “9 August,” his second effort to render a Darwish poem on film, screened in DIFF’s short film competition. Furthermore the trailer that DIFF’s production team worked up (to project before the festival’s gala screenings) was drawn almost exclusively from a particularly effective passage of Hajjaj’s film. That sequence sees a deaf actor sign a passage of Darwish’s poetry – an avalanche of verbs the poet deployed as if grappling to depict
the complex range of feeling his lover, and country, evoked in him. Audiences invariably applauded generously. It wasn’t odd to hear the word “beautiful,” in various languages.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
Our Own Sykes-Picot
The Gulf News recently published an opinion piece worth reading [I have fixed the English a little, and rearranged it so that it makes sense to Western readers]:
We Arabs are the worst collaborators against our own language. We always talk about conspiracies being woven against the Arabic language, while, in fact, we are Arabic's arch enemies.
Instead of calling upon all Arab satellite channels to use proper Arabic in their broadcasts, some Arab media officials do exactly the opposite. They call upon male and female presenters to use their colloquial regional dialects instead, which can hardly be understood in other countries.(...) It is true they have their own accents, but the language they speak is perfect English, while, on the other hand, the colloquial Arabic spoken by the Libyans, for instance, has nothing to do with proper Arabic. That's why no other Arab can understand it well when spoken on television.Arab films (..) tend to portray wedding registrars who use Quranic Arabic as clowns, as if telling the viewers not to learn this type of language, when they should.
(...) Isn't this a lingual Sykes-Picot, argues an Arab analyst? Isn't it enough that the Arab world has been carved up geographically and politically by the British and the French colonialists? Why do we try to fragment it linguistically now through the media? Is this done on purpose by media officials so that they prevent any kind of cultural communication amongst Arabs, which might lead later to real unification envisaged by Arab pan-Arab nationalists?
(...) It is true that the Arab satellite television channels that use proper Arabic have, as I mentioned in an earlier article, succeeded in unifying the Arab people where Arab nationalist parties have failed, but the TV stations that encourage the use of dialects have a parochial regionalist slant. In other words, they are an extension of Sykes-Picot.
[and so on and so forth - bad teachers, national leaders who can't string a sentence correctly, etc. etc..]
[Then the bomb]
Thanks to the West for protecting our language!
One cannot but also thank the BBC for using the best standard Arabic in its broadcast over half a century, while our supposedly national televisions and radios are using slang ‘cockney' Arabic.
And were it not for Google or Microsoft, the Arabic language would probably have missed out on the Internet and computer revolution. Thanks to Microsoft, proper Arabic has found a place for itself in the computer industry. And thanks to Google, Arabs can now use their proper Arabic to look for information on the World Wide Web. Were it left to Arabs themselves, they would have debased their language as they have done over the years.
[Not sure about the last part - Google just pulls up any rubbish in Arabic letters as Arabic, be it machine produced, or even Dari]
The unity of written Arabic is a myth, too. I have never been able to stomach literary works or academic materials written by scholars from North Africa, because the syntax is French.
The myth hits hardest when working as a copy editor. Businesses want to target the "Arab" world (another myth) but what sells in Lebanon does not sell in Riyadh or Aden. Just try selling car parts.
One could add to this myth the problem of almost non-existent technical terminology. Although many Arabists have tried unifying the terms used in pure and applied sciences, localisms are still more than common, and more than necessary.
I wouldn't blame the Arabic language teachers - they are bred to teach a language that is archaic and does not move with times. In the age of the Internet, fusha is making less and less sense to the younger generation. Time to stop being our own arch enemies, and modernise this dinosaur.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
We Arabs are the worst collaborators against our own language. We always talk about conspiracies being woven against the Arabic language, while, in fact, we are Arabic's arch enemies.
Instead of calling upon all Arab satellite channels to use proper Arabic in their broadcasts, some Arab media officials do exactly the opposite. They call upon male and female presenters to use their colloquial regional dialects instead, which can hardly be understood in other countries.(...) It is true they have their own accents, but the language they speak is perfect English, while, on the other hand, the colloquial Arabic spoken by the Libyans, for instance, has nothing to do with proper Arabic. That's why no other Arab can understand it well when spoken on television.Arab films (..) tend to portray wedding registrars who use Quranic Arabic as clowns, as if telling the viewers not to learn this type of language, when they should.
(...) Isn't this a lingual Sykes-Picot, argues an Arab analyst? Isn't it enough that the Arab world has been carved up geographically and politically by the British and the French colonialists? Why do we try to fragment it linguistically now through the media? Is this done on purpose by media officials so that they prevent any kind of cultural communication amongst Arabs, which might lead later to real unification envisaged by Arab pan-Arab nationalists?
(...) It is true that the Arab satellite television channels that use proper Arabic have, as I mentioned in an earlier article, succeeded in unifying the Arab people where Arab nationalist parties have failed, but the TV stations that encourage the use of dialects have a parochial regionalist slant. In other words, they are an extension of Sykes-Picot.
[and so on and so forth - bad teachers, national leaders who can't string a sentence correctly, etc. etc..]
[Then the bomb]
Thanks to the West for protecting our language!
One cannot but also thank the BBC for using the best standard Arabic in its broadcast over half a century, while our supposedly national televisions and radios are using slang ‘cockney' Arabic.
And were it not for Google or Microsoft, the Arabic language would probably have missed out on the Internet and computer revolution. Thanks to Microsoft, proper Arabic has found a place for itself in the computer industry. And thanks to Google, Arabs can now use their proper Arabic to look for information on the World Wide Web. Were it left to Arabs themselves, they would have debased their language as they have done over the years.
[Not sure about the last part - Google just pulls up any rubbish in Arabic letters as Arabic, be it machine produced, or even Dari]
The unity of written Arabic is a myth, too. I have never been able to stomach literary works or academic materials written by scholars from North Africa, because the syntax is French.
The myth hits hardest when working as a copy editor. Businesses want to target the "Arab" world (another myth) but what sells in Lebanon does not sell in Riyadh or Aden. Just try selling car parts.
One could add to this myth the problem of almost non-existent technical terminology. Although many Arabists have tried unifying the terms used in pure and applied sciences, localisms are still more than common, and more than necessary.
I wouldn't blame the Arabic language teachers - they are bred to teach a language that is archaic and does not move with times. In the age of the Internet, fusha is making less and less sense to the younger generation. Time to stop being our own arch enemies, and modernise this dinosaur.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Moroccan Judeoarab Dictionary the first of its kind..
Reported by Arutz Sheva:
(Apologies for the weird English)
Mordechai Hanoun has published the first dictionary of the Jewish Moroccan language. The two-year effort contains about 10,000 words, idioms, phrases and sayings from the Jewish Arabic of Morocco and their Hebrew translations. Hanoun told Arutz Sheva's Hebrew journal that words and phrases from English, French, Hebrew and Italian were mixed into this unique language, along with ancient Akkadian and Ugaritic. He also used the Hebrew word Me'arah, as in Ma'arat Hamachpelah, the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hevron, as an example of a word whose meaning (in this case that of "tomb") was preserved through the Jewish Moroccan language.
Hanoun said, "An injustice has been done to this language, which has been related to as vulgar and not as poetic as it is." He added that the time has come for people to get to know this language, which was created by the people. He thinks the general public, as opposed to academia, will take an interest in the language and the ancient heritage filled with stories and roots.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
(Apologies for the weird English)
Mordechai Hanoun has published the first dictionary of the Jewish Moroccan language. The two-year effort contains about 10,000 words, idioms, phrases and sayings from the Jewish Arabic of Morocco and their Hebrew translations. Hanoun told Arutz Sheva's Hebrew journal that words and phrases from English, French, Hebrew and Italian were mixed into this unique language, along with ancient Akkadian and Ugaritic. He also used the Hebrew word Me'arah, as in Ma'arat Hamachpelah, the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hevron, as an example of a word whose meaning (in this case that of "tomb") was preserved through the Jewish Moroccan language.
Hanoun said, "An injustice has been done to this language, which has been related to as vulgar and not as poetic as it is." He added that the time has come for people to get to know this language, which was created by the people. He thinks the general public, as opposed to academia, will take an interest in the language and the ancient heritage filled with stories and roots.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Stay Proficient or Rank Down, says CIA
Oh, la la!
Under a new policy announced recently by CIA director Leon Panetta, an intelligence officer can’t be promoted to the agency’s highest rank — the Senior Intelligence Service — without a demonstrated proficiency in a foreign language. From a CIA release:
While many senior Agency officers have tested proficient in a foreign language over the course of their careers, some have not kept their skills current. Under the new policy, promotions to SIS for most analysts and operations officers will be contingent on demonstrating foreign language competency. If an officer is promoted to SIS and does not meet the foreign language requirement within one year, he or she will return to their previous, lower grade. This is a powerful incentive to maintain and improve skills critical to the Agency’s global mission. Languages play a key role in the CIA’s work at all career levels.
“The stricter requirement for SIS promotion,” said Panetta, “is meant to ensure that leadership on this vital initiative comes from the executive level. With an unwavering commitment from SIS officers—to both lead by example and to support language proficiency at all levels—we will reach not only our language goals, but our ultimate objective: an Agency that is better positioned to protect our nation in the years ahead.”
Let me guess.. it takes the Yanks 9 years to see the error of their ways, and then they arrest a student at an airport for holding flash-cards in Arabic? The mind boggles!
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
Under a new policy announced recently by CIA director Leon Panetta, an intelligence officer can’t be promoted to the agency’s highest rank — the Senior Intelligence Service — without a demonstrated proficiency in a foreign language. From a CIA release:
While many senior Agency officers have tested proficient in a foreign language over the course of their careers, some have not kept their skills current. Under the new policy, promotions to SIS for most analysts and operations officers will be contingent on demonstrating foreign language competency. If an officer is promoted to SIS and does not meet the foreign language requirement within one year, he or she will return to their previous, lower grade. This is a powerful incentive to maintain and improve skills critical to the Agency’s global mission. Languages play a key role in the CIA’s work at all career levels.
“The stricter requirement for SIS promotion,” said Panetta, “is meant to ensure that leadership on this vital initiative comes from the executive level. With an unwavering commitment from SIS officers—to both lead by example and to support language proficiency at all levels—we will reach not only our language goals, but our ultimate objective: an Agency that is better positioned to protect our nation in the years ahead.”
Let me guess.. it takes the Yanks 9 years to see the error of their ways, and then they arrest a student at an airport for holding flash-cards in Arabic? The mind boggles!
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
Even more reasons to have a multilingual website
This from the Marketing Blog
(1) English is not a predominant language in the Internet any more. As the Internet grows, so does the variety of languages. Having a multilingual website means you will be able to sell much more to those new customers. Fundamental, my dear Watson!
(2) If your website is translated to many languages, it receives not just many new orders, but it enjoys a bigger flow of traffic. Your website will receive more visitors. So you can use gadgets such as AdSense ads more efficiently and will receive more CTR and will increase overall dollar amount per day.
(3) Multilingual website brings credibility to a company. Not a cheap free machine translation, for sure. Errors may hurt reputation of a company. Poorly done, machine translation may erode a company’s reputation completely. We are talking a real professional human approach to translation. Professionally done translation adds credibility to your website. Fundamental, too, but you would be amazed at how many CEO's don't get it. Just think Pajero.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
(1) English is not a predominant language in the Internet any more. As the Internet grows, so does the variety of languages. Having a multilingual website means you will be able to sell much more to those new customers. Fundamental, my dear Watson!
(2) If your website is translated to many languages, it receives not just many new orders, but it enjoys a bigger flow of traffic. Your website will receive more visitors. So you can use gadgets such as AdSense ads more efficiently and will receive more CTR and will increase overall dollar amount per day.
(3) Multilingual website brings credibility to a company. Not a cheap free machine translation, for sure. Errors may hurt reputation of a company. Poorly done, machine translation may erode a company’s reputation completely. We are talking a real professional human approach to translation. Professionally done translation adds credibility to your website. Fundamental, too, but you would be amazed at how many CEO's don't get it. Just think Pajero.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
Arabic still among the first 10 languages online
There we are, No. 8, with 50,422,300 users online. Enough stuff to translate..
Source: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
Source: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Not as "Arabic" as it is claimed
An interesting article on loan words in Arabic was prompted by the recent debacle on whether the term "Allah" is purely the property of Malaysian Muslims..
Note please, they don't speak Arabic. Note again, Islam came to an Arabic-speaking Arabia that was full of Christian, Jews and other religions, and where Arabic jostled side by side with Aramaic, Syriac and Hebrew.
But that is the province of historical linguistics in "democratic" countries, not of political war-mongering and nationalistic hip-hop to the tune of religion.
It is evident that there is no such thing as a pure language which would presuppose a self-contained and self-sufficient linguistic community, hermetically sealed from interactions with neighboring linguistic communities – a historical impossibility by any account. Loan words in the Koran point to this over and over again..
"From the earliest period of Islam down to the present day, attentive readers have observed that there are words in the Koran which appear to be of non-Arabic origin. Such observations, motivated by varying factors, have been the source of controversy, discussions and extensive study in traditional Muslim and Euro-American scholarship," says Andrew Rippin his article on “Foreign Vocabulary” in Encyclopedia of the Quran vol 2 E- I ed., Jane Dammen McAullife (Brill 2002) pp. 226- 237).
And the hip-hop response to this is that (a) God sent the Koran down in the a form which the Arabs will easily understand. i.e. Arabic; (b) Arabic is the widest and richest of the languages, it should not be surprising that they exists similar words between Koranic Arabic and other languages (DUH? It is only the 8th language of the world, with English being by now the first, followed by Chinese); (c) words of foreign origin are to be found in the Koran but they had been incorporated into Arabic well before the revelation of the Koran and are thus to be considered Arabic, and the nature of the Arabic usage of such words is superior to their usage as found in other languages (is that why almost all technical terms nowadays are being transliterated from English?).
In his 1938 book, The Foreign Vocabulary of the Koran (now almost an obsolete academic curiosity, considering the Arab Middle East can't speak proper Arabic anyway), Arthur Jeffrey wrote, “Closer examination of the question [foreign words in the Koran] reveals even further and more detailed correspondences than these which appear on the surface, and forces on one the conviction that not only the greater part of the religious vocabulary, but also most of the cultural vocabulary of the Koran is of non-Arabic origin".
A few examples will suffice here:
Why, for example, does khalîfa end with an “a” which should denote it as a feminine? There is no answer from Arabic, but in Aramaic it is the article which usually in that language comes as an “a” (alif in Aramaic/Syriad spelling, ta’ marbuta in Arabic) at the end of the word, e.g. meshîha, the Messiah. These scholars would have been able to account for the “feminine” gender of khalîfa if they admit to its origin in the cognate Semitic languages.
Consider the words ‘salat’, or ‘zakat’ - why is it that in Koranic Arabic they are spelled with a “w” in the middle, and not, as outside of the Koran, with ‘alif’ to make it sound a long “a” (salât), while the Koranic spelling makes it sound like ‘salôt’,or ‘zakôt’? There is no answer from Arabic grammar for this observation, but the phenomenon is easy to explain if we take them to be loan words from Aramaic/Syriac, which uses a long ‘o’ where the Arabic uses a long ‘a’. The same explanation applies to the word, ‘salâm’ and ‘shalôm’.
The hip-hop continues, and will eventually become a civil war over a loan word.. Nevermind who is loaning from whom.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
Note please, they don't speak Arabic. Note again, Islam came to an Arabic-speaking Arabia that was full of Christian, Jews and other religions, and where Arabic jostled side by side with Aramaic, Syriac and Hebrew.
But that is the province of historical linguistics in "democratic" countries, not of political war-mongering and nationalistic hip-hop to the tune of religion.
It is evident that there is no such thing as a pure language which would presuppose a self-contained and self-sufficient linguistic community, hermetically sealed from interactions with neighboring linguistic communities – a historical impossibility by any account. Loan words in the Koran point to this over and over again..
"From the earliest period of Islam down to the present day, attentive readers have observed that there are words in the Koran which appear to be of non-Arabic origin. Such observations, motivated by varying factors, have been the source of controversy, discussions and extensive study in traditional Muslim and Euro-American scholarship," says Andrew Rippin his article on “Foreign Vocabulary” in Encyclopedia of the Quran vol 2 E- I ed., Jane Dammen McAullife (Brill 2002) pp. 226- 237).
And the hip-hop response to this is that (a) God sent the Koran down in the a form which the Arabs will easily understand. i.e. Arabic; (b) Arabic is the widest and richest of the languages, it should not be surprising that they exists similar words between Koranic Arabic and other languages (DUH? It is only the 8th language of the world, with English being by now the first, followed by Chinese); (c) words of foreign origin are to be found in the Koran but they had been incorporated into Arabic well before the revelation of the Koran and are thus to be considered Arabic, and the nature of the Arabic usage of such words is superior to their usage as found in other languages (is that why almost all technical terms nowadays are being transliterated from English?).
In his 1938 book, The Foreign Vocabulary of the Koran (now almost an obsolete academic curiosity, considering the Arab Middle East can't speak proper Arabic anyway), Arthur Jeffrey wrote, “Closer examination of the question [foreign words in the Koran] reveals even further and more detailed correspondences than these which appear on the surface, and forces on one the conviction that not only the greater part of the religious vocabulary, but also most of the cultural vocabulary of the Koran is of non-Arabic origin".
A few examples will suffice here:
Why, for example, does khalîfa end with an “a” which should denote it as a feminine? There is no answer from Arabic, but in Aramaic it is the article which usually in that language comes as an “a” (alif in Aramaic/Syriad spelling, ta’ marbuta in Arabic) at the end of the word, e.g. meshîha, the Messiah. These scholars would have been able to account for the “feminine” gender of khalîfa if they admit to its origin in the cognate Semitic languages.
Consider the words ‘salat’, or ‘zakat’ - why is it that in Koranic Arabic they are spelled with a “w” in the middle, and not, as outside of the Koran, with ‘alif’ to make it sound a long “a” (salât), while the Koranic spelling makes it sound like ‘salôt’,or ‘zakôt’? There is no answer from Arabic grammar for this observation, but the phenomenon is easy to explain if we take them to be loan words from Aramaic/Syriac, which uses a long ‘o’ where the Arabic uses a long ‘a’. The same explanation applies to the word, ‘salâm’ and ‘shalôm’.
The hip-hop continues, and will eventually become a civil war over a loan word.. Nevermind who is loaning from whom.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
Proposal to Make Arabic Official at WTO Expensive
But if it goes ahead we may have some more work to do :-)
Reuters reported on 26/01/10 that Arab members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) are pushing for Arabic to be made a fourth official language of the global trade body. But the heavy cost of translation, interpreting and extra printing involved in adding Arabic to the three current official languages -- English, French and Spanish -- means the proposal is running up against resistance (...) Any move to add Arabic as an official language would probably prompt a request for Chinese, and maybe even Russian -- aligning WTO language policy with the United Nations (...) Adding three languages would cost about 45 million Swiss francs ($43 million) a year, the ambassador said -- no small amount given a total WTO budget in 2009 of 189 million francs. As a result the Arab group will need to lobby hard to convince other members of the virtues of the proposal
The WTO's 153 members include a dozen Arab countries, and another six are applying to join, including Iraq, Algeria and Libya.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
Reuters reported on 26/01/10 that Arab members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) are pushing for Arabic to be made a fourth official language of the global trade body. But the heavy cost of translation, interpreting and extra printing involved in adding Arabic to the three current official languages -- English, French and Spanish -- means the proposal is running up against resistance (...) Any move to add Arabic as an official language would probably prompt a request for Chinese, and maybe even Russian -- aligning WTO language policy with the United Nations (...) Adding three languages would cost about 45 million Swiss francs ($43 million) a year, the ambassador said -- no small amount given a total WTO budget in 2009 of 189 million francs. As a result the Arab group will need to lobby hard to convince other members of the virtues of the proposal
The WTO's 153 members include a dozen Arab countries, and another six are applying to join, including Iraq, Algeria and Libya.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
Writing in multiple identities
Sami Michael is an Iraqi-born, Israeli author. His interview on MedArabNews by Claudia De Martino tells the story of a writer with multiple identities and languages, as well as some strong political opinions..
"I was born in Iraq and immigrated to Israel at 21. Back in Iraq, I was writing in Arabic and it took me 15 years to switch from Arabic to Hebrew writing. In those 15 years, I never published novels in Arabic, but many short and long stories. I also wrote for a newspaper for 5 years; I was on the editorial board of Arabic language newspapers. But the reason why I never published a single novel in Arabic is that authors in exile have to write in the language of the country in which they live, otherwise they do not find readers and most of them became frustrated."
I can identify with that, as well as with his sentiments that "in many Arab countries in the Middle East there is hardly any freedom of speech. If an author writes something “critical” of the regimes in place, he/she may be taking an extreme risk, be jailed or persecuted for it" while in Israel the "persecution" is more subtle - no promotion, no financial assistance. It is the same in any democratic country. Democracy only works if you have access to the media, and main-stream media are seldom democractic anywhere. Thank God for the Internet.
I do write in Arabic, although much less than in English. I have another blog, under a pseudonym, where the Internet has allowed me to talk to people in the language they understand without being jailed or shot for it.
I also liked his comment that "my mother tongue is Arabic and my nationality Israeli, and my identity Jewish. I have always thought of myself as an “Arab Jew” without distinguishing at all which one of my identities was the dominant one. don’t feel I need to define myself for anyone, as an Englishman doesn’t get up in the morning and ask himself: who am I?" Many decades ago I opted for a line from Bernard Shaw's Man and Arms - I am a citizen of the world.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
"I was born in Iraq and immigrated to Israel at 21. Back in Iraq, I was writing in Arabic and it took me 15 years to switch from Arabic to Hebrew writing. In those 15 years, I never published novels in Arabic, but many short and long stories. I also wrote for a newspaper for 5 years; I was on the editorial board of Arabic language newspapers. But the reason why I never published a single novel in Arabic is that authors in exile have to write in the language of the country in which they live, otherwise they do not find readers and most of them became frustrated."
I can identify with that, as well as with his sentiments that "in many Arab countries in the Middle East there is hardly any freedom of speech. If an author writes something “critical” of the regimes in place, he/she may be taking an extreme risk, be jailed or persecuted for it" while in Israel the "persecution" is more subtle - no promotion, no financial assistance. It is the same in any democratic country. Democracy only works if you have access to the media, and main-stream media are seldom democractic anywhere. Thank God for the Internet.
I do write in Arabic, although much less than in English. I have another blog, under a pseudonym, where the Internet has allowed me to talk to people in the language they understand without being jailed or shot for it.
I also liked his comment that "my mother tongue is Arabic and my nationality Israeli, and my identity Jewish. I have always thought of myself as an “Arab Jew” without distinguishing at all which one of my identities was the dominant one. don’t feel I need to define myself for anyone, as an Englishman doesn’t get up in the morning and ask himself: who am I?" Many decades ago I opted for a line from Bernard Shaw's Man and Arms - I am a citizen of the world.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
GIGO and Marketing Jargon
I am immensely grateful to Lauren Nemec from Applied Languages for the posting on why it is almost impossible to translate marketing crap from English into other languages, especially ones where obfuscation is not a measure of intellectual agility.
A few years back we landed a project for a tourism authority who wanted to "sell" what their area offered to the Arab World. They hired a copywriting company full of young heads and a month later we were presented with 80 pages of "young-head-Aussie" text.
Everything was "unique". And I mean EVERYTHING. Like, each sunset was unique. The sands on the beach were unique. You shopped in a unique atmosphere, buying unique clothes in unique boutiques, sipping unique coffee in unique cafes on unique streets lined with unique trees. And so on, and so forth..
And then there was the very relative, totally undefined term "fun". Getting wet on a unique waterslide was fun as was drying in the similarly unique air funnel. Eating out is fun. Driving down to Brisbane on the congested motorway was "fun". Kids were going to have fun and so were adults, and the dog and the cat.. and your wallet, I assume.
Amazing. Wonderful. Indescribable (how can you write about an indescribable entity, let alone translate it?)
As Nemec says in her blog, it was meant to impress. I translated. The agent in the Middle East read it, convened a phone meeting, and said very clearly: "The translation is very good. Change your copywriters. The English copy is crap."
The error that many companies in the English speaking world fall into is that they think they can smother opposition by the sheer amount of incomprehensible jargon. That might well work for some at the local level, mostly those who speak the same GIGO dialect. But when you translate your materials to Arabic, Polish, or even German (just to mention a few of the ones I know), information is paramount. Information, and cultural sensitivity.
The unique young-heads at the copywriting company did not even bother to think whether what they were saying would be acceptable, let alone attractive, to the Arab audience. So they put in bars and nightclubs as attractions - unique, mind you, until your third glass of whiskey, after which all nightclubs look the same. They marketed open air saunas for both sexes, and marriage ceremonies atop an air balloon. They waxed lyrical (amazing, unique, etc) about wine tours and working dog shows. And, to make things worse, they did not actually explain what all this was about.
I wonder how many of us would pay heavy money to go somewhere overseas for the sole purpose of watching sunsets, get mud baths, and spend the night in a night club drinking. Heavy money, because Arab tourists come over with wives (often a few per one male) and a progeny line the size of a football club. They come mostly to shop. Singapore is cheaper, and their Tourism Board material actually INFORMATIVE (we know, we did it). So Australia loses potential tourism income because we just can't think in other people's ways. It is all unique, mind you.
Someone out there needs to write a cross-cultural marketing course geared at young-airheads.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
A few years back we landed a project for a tourism authority who wanted to "sell" what their area offered to the Arab World. They hired a copywriting company full of young heads and a month later we were presented with 80 pages of "young-head-Aussie" text.
Everything was "unique". And I mean EVERYTHING. Like, each sunset was unique. The sands on the beach were unique. You shopped in a unique atmosphere, buying unique clothes in unique boutiques, sipping unique coffee in unique cafes on unique streets lined with unique trees. And so on, and so forth..
And then there was the very relative, totally undefined term "fun". Getting wet on a unique waterslide was fun as was drying in the similarly unique air funnel. Eating out is fun. Driving down to Brisbane on the congested motorway was "fun". Kids were going to have fun and so were adults, and the dog and the cat.. and your wallet, I assume.
Amazing. Wonderful. Indescribable (how can you write about an indescribable entity, let alone translate it?)
As Nemec says in her blog, it was meant to impress. I translated. The agent in the Middle East read it, convened a phone meeting, and said very clearly: "The translation is very good. Change your copywriters. The English copy is crap."
The error that many companies in the English speaking world fall into is that they think they can smother opposition by the sheer amount of incomprehensible jargon. That might well work for some at the local level, mostly those who speak the same GIGO dialect. But when you translate your materials to Arabic, Polish, or even German (just to mention a few of the ones I know), information is paramount. Information, and cultural sensitivity.
The unique young-heads at the copywriting company did not even bother to think whether what they were saying would be acceptable, let alone attractive, to the Arab audience. So they put in bars and nightclubs as attractions - unique, mind you, until your third glass of whiskey, after which all nightclubs look the same. They marketed open air saunas for both sexes, and marriage ceremonies atop an air balloon. They waxed lyrical (amazing, unique, etc) about wine tours and working dog shows. And, to make things worse, they did not actually explain what all this was about.
I wonder how many of us would pay heavy money to go somewhere overseas for the sole purpose of watching sunsets, get mud baths, and spend the night in a night club drinking. Heavy money, because Arab tourists come over with wives (often a few per one male) and a progeny line the size of a football club. They come mostly to shop. Singapore is cheaper, and their Tourism Board material actually INFORMATIVE (we know, we did it). So Australia loses potential tourism income because we just can't think in other people's ways. It is all unique, mind you.
Someone out there needs to write a cross-cultural marketing course geared at young-airheads.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Advertising in Arabic-speaking Media? Read This!
From The National (UAE)
by Hassan Hassan
ABU DHABI // Arabic-language online media outlets are burgeoning, but still have little advertising revenue compared with their print counterparts, says a report by the Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research (ECSSR).
The report, published in the latest issue of the centre’s Future Horizons magazine, argued that Arabic-language print media lacked quality, but continued to thrive because advertising buyers had not been persuaded of the value of online ads.
Most print media persisted because in addition to advertising, many publications also received funding from individuals, businesses or governments, it said.
If advertising buyers turned to online media, print media would be in “great danger”.
“Print media is suffering a crisis with their readers for failing to adapt to the constant developments,” said Othman al Umair, the owner of Elaph, one of the first Arabic-language electronic newspapers, which was established in May 2001.
Mr al Umair said the print sector was “trying hard to produce good-looking papers, yet with [poor-quality] news or information, while [electronic media] is succeeding in bringing high-quality news and information directly to the reader”.
The Arab Media Outlook from the Dubai Press Club and the consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers said that internet advertising revenue in the UAE was expected to grow by 9 per cent a year between 2006 and 2012, while advertising was expected to grow 13 per cent a year at magazines and 16 per cent a year for newspapers in the Emirates.
Online advertising in the Middle East comprised less than 1 per cent of total advertising spending in 2007, the outlook said. In the UAE, print media accounted for 88 per cent of total advertising spending in 2007.
The ECSSR report noted that the continued publication of some Arabic-language newspapers was not an indication of their profitability. When an Arabic-language newspaper stopped publishing, it said, it often did so for political reasons rather than financial ones.
Ghassan Habbal, a researcher at the ECSSR and one of the authors of the report, offered the example of Al Safir, a Lebanese newspaper. The paper’s peak sales are about 10,000 copies, but it attracts about four times the advertising revenue of a website with more than 50,000 readers.
In general, a high-traffic website can expect to recoup about 2 per cent of its costs through advertising, the report said.
Muaffaq Harb, a media expert, said the value of the internet for the advertising community was demographics. Websites can easily collect data on readers, which are valuable for advertisers who want to make sure that their messages reach a specific group.
“Advertising is a decisive factor that would make up for the lack of subscription fees,” he said. “Fees are necessary for specialised websites and newspapers, not the general ones.”
Mr al Umair said the challenges to print media included a greater tolerance for free speech online compared to print.
Mr Harb agreed that the future of electronic media versus print depended on two issues: freedom of expression and advertising. “There’s no doubt electronic media is safeguarding freedom of expression for any individual who tries to express his or her views.”
He said, however, that the ease of online publishing often chipped away at journalism standards, a fact that was difficult for the public to recognise.
“People would lose the ability to differentiate between good and bad and here lies the problem with the internet,” he said. “The way to avoid that is to comply with highest journalism standards.”
The growth of electronic media would not lead to the disappearance of print media, he said. “It is too soon to speak of the destruction of newspapers.”
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
by Hassan Hassan
ABU DHABI // Arabic-language online media outlets are burgeoning, but still have little advertising revenue compared with their print counterparts, says a report by the Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research (ECSSR).
The report, published in the latest issue of the centre’s Future Horizons magazine, argued that Arabic-language print media lacked quality, but continued to thrive because advertising buyers had not been persuaded of the value of online ads.
Most print media persisted because in addition to advertising, many publications also received funding from individuals, businesses or governments, it said.
If advertising buyers turned to online media, print media would be in “great danger”.
“Print media is suffering a crisis with their readers for failing to adapt to the constant developments,” said Othman al Umair, the owner of Elaph, one of the first Arabic-language electronic newspapers, which was established in May 2001.
Mr al Umair said the print sector was “trying hard to produce good-looking papers, yet with [poor-quality] news or information, while [electronic media] is succeeding in bringing high-quality news and information directly to the reader”.
The Arab Media Outlook from the Dubai Press Club and the consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers said that internet advertising revenue in the UAE was expected to grow by 9 per cent a year between 2006 and 2012, while advertising was expected to grow 13 per cent a year at magazines and 16 per cent a year for newspapers in the Emirates.
Online advertising in the Middle East comprised less than 1 per cent of total advertising spending in 2007, the outlook said. In the UAE, print media accounted for 88 per cent of total advertising spending in 2007.
The ECSSR report noted that the continued publication of some Arabic-language newspapers was not an indication of their profitability. When an Arabic-language newspaper stopped publishing, it said, it often did so for political reasons rather than financial ones.
Ghassan Habbal, a researcher at the ECSSR and one of the authors of the report, offered the example of Al Safir, a Lebanese newspaper. The paper’s peak sales are about 10,000 copies, but it attracts about four times the advertising revenue of a website with more than 50,000 readers.
In general, a high-traffic website can expect to recoup about 2 per cent of its costs through advertising, the report said.
Muaffaq Harb, a media expert, said the value of the internet for the advertising community was demographics. Websites can easily collect data on readers, which are valuable for advertisers who want to make sure that their messages reach a specific group.
“Advertising is a decisive factor that would make up for the lack of subscription fees,” he said. “Fees are necessary for specialised websites and newspapers, not the general ones.”
Mr al Umair said the challenges to print media included a greater tolerance for free speech online compared to print.
Mr Harb agreed that the future of electronic media versus print depended on two issues: freedom of expression and advertising. “There’s no doubt electronic media is safeguarding freedom of expression for any individual who tries to express his or her views.”
He said, however, that the ease of online publishing often chipped away at journalism standards, a fact that was difficult for the public to recognise.
“People would lose the ability to differentiate between good and bad and here lies the problem with the internet,” he said. “The way to avoid that is to comply with highest journalism standards.”
The growth of electronic media would not lead to the disappearance of print media, he said. “It is too soon to speak of the destruction of newspapers.”
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
Two Years Later, Kalima Delivers Words in German
Good to see the project has not folded and is spreading into languages other than English. Here is an update from ME Online:
A workshop on the translation of poetry was held in the German city of Germersheim by Kalima, the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage translation project. The event was organized jointly with Department of German Language and Literature of the School of Translation, Languages and Cultures, Johannes Gutenberg University and the German Academy for Language and Literature.
The first day of the workshop, attended by the Director of Kalima, Dr Ali bin Tamim, witnessed heated discussions between elite group of Arab and German poets, critics, and translators. The issue was the translation of poetry in general, and German Poetry in particular.
A book exhibition was also held for the works translated jointly by Kalima and Johannes Gutenberg University.
"This workshop is only the beginning of a series of collaborative work conducted under the supervision of Mustapha Al Sulaiman, Professor of Interpretation at the Johannes Gutenberg University," said bin Tamim.
"The School of Translation, Languages and Cultures and Kalima are continuing their joint efforts to translate prose, poetry, children and youth literature, and books of thoughts from German in to Arabic," he added.
The scholars discussed various theoretical and practical subjects during the workshop, especially the important role played by translation as a bridge between cultures, the integration and differences in human creativity, and the relations between social values, culture and translation.
They highlighted the association of translation with the cultural needs, human creativity, and mutual recognition. They affirmed that translation is a cultural project by its own merits, a tool for cultures to complement each others, and an aim to form a humanity culture with creativity and mutual respect as its bases.
The workshop was attended by many poetesses and poets: Emiratis Nujoom Al Ghanem and Ahmed Rashed Thani; German Daniela Danz, Alreka Dresna, Ilma Rakuza, the German Academy for Language and Literature Chairman Klaus Reichert, Berlin Festival Director Joachim Sartorius, Kathryn Schmidt, Jan and Wagner; Syrian-German poet Adel Qarshuli; Moroccan poet Mohammed Benis, and Dr Faisal Darraj.
Writers, critics and translators participating in the workshop discussed the translation of poetry to be published by Kalima within its Modern German Poetry Anthology. The workshop concluded with a 'poetry night' with Arab and German poets reading verses of their poems on Arabic and German background music.
Meanwhile, the Mayor of Germersheim Dieter Hänlein received Kalima Director Dr Ali bin Tamim and the Cultural Attache of the UAE Embassy in Berlin along with the Dean of the School of Translation and the Chairman of the German Academy for Language and Literature. Hänlein emphasized the importance of the role played by Kalima in support of the translation movement in the Arab World, while he Chairman of the German Academy for Language and Literature highlighted the gains the German authors received by having their works translated and presented to the Arab-speaking audience.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
A workshop on the translation of poetry was held in the German city of Germersheim by Kalima, the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage translation project. The event was organized jointly with Department of German Language and Literature of the School of Translation, Languages and Cultures, Johannes Gutenberg University and the German Academy for Language and Literature.
The first day of the workshop, attended by the Director of Kalima, Dr Ali bin Tamim, witnessed heated discussions between elite group of Arab and German poets, critics, and translators. The issue was the translation of poetry in general, and German Poetry in particular.
A book exhibition was also held for the works translated jointly by Kalima and Johannes Gutenberg University.
"This workshop is only the beginning of a series of collaborative work conducted under the supervision of Mustapha Al Sulaiman, Professor of Interpretation at the Johannes Gutenberg University," said bin Tamim.
"The School of Translation, Languages and Cultures and Kalima are continuing their joint efforts to translate prose, poetry, children and youth literature, and books of thoughts from German in to Arabic," he added.
The scholars discussed various theoretical and practical subjects during the workshop, especially the important role played by translation as a bridge between cultures, the integration and differences in human creativity, and the relations between social values, culture and translation.
They highlighted the association of translation with the cultural needs, human creativity, and mutual recognition. They affirmed that translation is a cultural project by its own merits, a tool for cultures to complement each others, and an aim to form a humanity culture with creativity and mutual respect as its bases.
The workshop was attended by many poetesses and poets: Emiratis Nujoom Al Ghanem and Ahmed Rashed Thani; German Daniela Danz, Alreka Dresna, Ilma Rakuza, the German Academy for Language and Literature Chairman Klaus Reichert, Berlin Festival Director Joachim Sartorius, Kathryn Schmidt, Jan and Wagner; Syrian-German poet Adel Qarshuli; Moroccan poet Mohammed Benis, and Dr Faisal Darraj.
Writers, critics and translators participating in the workshop discussed the translation of poetry to be published by Kalima within its Modern German Poetry Anthology. The workshop concluded with a 'poetry night' with Arab and German poets reading verses of their poems on Arabic and German background music.
Meanwhile, the Mayor of Germersheim Dieter Hänlein received Kalima Director Dr Ali bin Tamim and the Cultural Attache of the UAE Embassy in Berlin along with the Dean of the School of Translation and the Chairman of the German Academy for Language and Literature. Hänlein emphasized the importance of the role played by Kalima in support of the translation movement in the Arab World, while he Chairman of the German Academy for Language and Literature highlighted the gains the German authors received by having their works translated and presented to the Arab-speaking audience.
For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Language Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.
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