More Gealic Hooters As Councillor Asks Members to Undress

From The Press and Journal (Aberdeen):

"Meanwhile, it is hot air that is the problem at committee meetings of Western Isles Council; and Gaelic hot air at that. Translator Dollag, a Niseach, sits in a booth at the back and rabbits away, converting perfectly good Gaelic into a squawky north-of-Galson dialect that, being heavily guga-flavoured, has only a passing resemblance to the Queen's English. Still, it's only for the benefit of the handful of councillors who are non-Gaelic speakers, so they can sit there nodding, wired for sound.

Unfortunately, I have to report that the usually reliable process of simultaneous translation sparked unseemly scenes at a recent meeting of the transport committee. In the chair was the usually precise and immaculately spoken member for Barra, Donald Manford.

He began proceedings by reading out the announcements. They included a reminder to everyone present to switch off their mobile phones. A mischievous imp who was there tells me that Donald was distracted by something and misread the note. Instead of asking the councillors to put off their phones, what he actually told them was to put off their clothes.

There was a stunned, awkward silence. Then the voice of an audibly shocked Dollag could be heard in the headphones. Afraid that the elected members were taking the dress-down concept way too far, she was heard protesting loudly that there were some things she just would not translate. So there.

The Gaelic-speaking members were in total disarray. Stornoway North member Murdo Macleod's jaw dropped so much it nearly fractured the desk; Morag Munro, of Harris, needed smelling salts, and Benbecula's Martin Taylor had to jump on Catherine Macdonald, the Dame of Drinishader, as she tried to comply with the chairman's instruction. Isn't it a pity that council proceedings are not televised?

A supremely remorseful Donald Manford feebly tried to excuse his outrageous conduct by explaining it was an easy mistake for him to make because the note was written in a dialect he was not familiar with Lewis Gaelic. His colleagues now hope he will get more familiar with an optician."

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Taha and Adina - Translating the Other

Taha Muhammad Ali, is a Palestinian poet born in Saffuriyya, a Galilee village that Israel bombed during the 1948 war and demolished in its wake. An autodidact (he had just four years of perfunctory village schooling), Taha has spent nearly 60 years now operating a souvenir shop near the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth. At the same time, he has taught himself much of classical and contemporary Arabic literature, absorbed copious quantities of English and American poetry and prose, and evolved, slowly but with a stubbornly single-minded kind of determination, into a writer of formidable power.

Adina Hoffman describes herself as an American-born Jew who has lived in Jerusalem for much of her adult life with a sort of double identity. She met Taha just after the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000, when together with her husband and another Palestinian friend they started translating Taha's works into English. Translating Taha was itself seen by Adina as an act of political protest against the atrocities.

Now she has published a book about the poet, "My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness. The book places Muhammad Ali’s life in the context of the lives of his predecessors and peers, My Happiness offers a sweeping depiction of a charged and fateful epoch. It is a work that Arabic scholar Michael Sells describes as “among the five ‘must read’ books on the Israel-Palestine tragedy.” In an era when talk of the “Clash of Civilizations” dominates, this biography offers something else entirely: a view of the people and culture of the Middle East that is rich, nuanced, and, above all else, deeply human.

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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/