Japan post-earthquake: Glimpses of Stoicism, Humanness and Strength

This is from a friend of mine, a Japanese translator and interpreter, Yoko.

Compilation of personal episodes, comments, and tweets from earthquake-affected people translated (by me) from Japanese:

1. Tokyo Disneyland started distributing sweets and treats from the Disney shop. I saw conspicuously dressed up high-school girls demanding more than they should need for themselves, and felt dismayed. Later I saw the same girls distributing the treats to little kids in the Earthquake shelter. Mothers with small kids could not stand in the line to receive the treats, so the high-school girls' action was very much appreciated.

2. In a supermarket where all the merchandise were still on the floor after the earthquake, shoppers picked up the merchandise and put them neatly back on the shelves as they shopped, calmly waited in line for their turn to check out, and paid for their purchase as usual. In the packed train, an elderly gave his seat to a pregnant woman. Many foreigners were speechless to see such acts. Japan is extraordinary.

3. When the lights turned green, typically only one vehicle could get across the intersection before the lights turned red. But all the drivers were calm. The traffic would come to a standstill at a more complicated intersection, but during the ten hours of traffic jam, I never heard any honk other than to thank other drivers. Despite the fears that had engulfed me, I came to love Japan even more.

4. When I was walking home from my university late last night, a baker-woman was distributing bread to people who were walking home. The bakery is normally closed at that hour. In this time of confusion, she had discovered what she could do to help. I was warm inside. Tokyo is not a bad place to be in right now.

5. I received an email from my Korean friend: "The only country that has ever received atomic bombing. A country that lost the WWII. A country that receives typhoons every year. And earthquakes. And a tsunami...A small island nation, and yet, it always knows how to stand up after it fell. That's Japan. Keep it up." I'm crying right now.

6. When I was getting really fed up waiting for a train on the platform, a homeless man gave me a cardboard box and told me to sit on it to keep myself warm. We always ignore the homeless people. Now their warmth has hit me.

7. I walked for four hours to get home. I saw a woman who was standing in front of her house and showing a large sketchbook to the many passers-by. She had written on the sketchbook, "Please use our toilet if you need." Perhaps Japan is one of the most hospitable counties in the world. When I saw her, it was hard not to cry.

8. I had to walk four hours to get home and the streets were packed with people walking home. But it was not chaotic as people marched in a very orderly manner. Convenience stores and other shops were operating as if nothing had happened. Network infrastructure withstood the huge quake. Many shelters for stranded people were instantly set up in many locations. The train services came back on the same day and the trains run throughout the night to carry people home. It is a great country. This is something you wouldn't know from a simple GDP ranking.

9. A friend in Chiba told me this. An old man in a shelter murmured, "I don't know what's going to happen now." A teen-age boy started stroking the man's back and said, "Don't worry. When I grow up, I will bring everything back to normal." We will be all right. Our future is bright.

10. The man had been rescued after 42 hours of being trapped in a destroyed house. When he came out, he smiled at the TV camera and said, "I was there when the tsunami from the Chilean earthquake hit us. It's all right. All we need to do is rebuild." What is important is what we do from now.

11. "Operation Tomodachi" [meaning, "Operation Friends"] is the name of the U.S. military's rescue operation this time.

12. It's so dark with the power down, so the stars are shining the brightest ever. My fellow earthquake refugees in Sendai, let's look up.

13. M9.0. One of the greatest earthquakes in the human history. Well then, let's make the passion to rebuild and love for each other one of the greatest in the human history.


Japanese migrants' communities across the State are preparing for fundraising activities. The activities will typically involve paper-craft cranes and in some cases music or dance performance. If you see one like that in your suburb, please make generous donations, but make sure the fundraising activity is legitimate. (Normally the organisation that receives the funds, such as Red Cross, issues an official letter of authority. If you are not sure, you can always ask the fundraiser to show you such a letter before making donations.)

Thank you very much for your support for the earthquake victims in Japan.

Yoko

Slowly Catching Up to the Reading Nations

Rufoof...

Shelves...

Called a "flagship project" - more like flagging-stone. Or is it flogging?

What am I raving about, you ask? Well, a UAE-based software company has "unveiled" a new mobile book-reading application. They called it Rufoof. In the words of its developer:

- it is one of the prominent Arabic apps on the app store, is an amazing reading experience for Arabic Content (I read Arabic on Kindle, what's so amazing?)

- Users of Rufoof can view a wide range of book titles in different categories and download a sample to have the content available even when the device is offline. Another feature of the application is reading through bookmarked pages, search and change the font size as well as colour of the shelves. This represents a big advancement in the world of reading from an iPhone, Ipad or other smart phone devices. (DUH? Ditto Kindle, Sony, iPad, etc. etc..)

- is a revolutionary bookstore application that targets the Arab audience with more than 4,500 books covering various sectors (OMG. I have this much and more ebooks alone. Must be a drought in publishing).

Something is telling me that they will be selling it oveseas to the diaspora. Only a few days ago, a blogger I respect posted a Yahoo Maktoob research on reading in the Arab World. She says that "the survey polled 3,503 online folks, which means that it should definitely be taken with several grains of salt. Internet penetration in the Arab world does not go beyond 35%, and the fact that the poll takers are online already says a lot about them." And what were the results? A quarter of people polled hardly ever or never read books for personal enjoyment. Roba (the blogger from Jordan) blames lack of pulp fiction as a reason for turning off young readers. Would I rather they didn't have intellectual junk food? Of course, yes.

So will reading off the electronic shelf be any more enticing? Is Edward Said or Nawal Saadawi more palatable in e-ink than on paper? You never know. Research is beginning to show that reading online makes one more shallow and destroys the ability to think deeply. What it does to heads that were empty in the first place, is something we need to wait and see.



Suitably empty!

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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 Communication Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

Writing in a Language Other Than Your Own

It is interesting to see how, at the time Arabic-speaking Gulf countries complain about the morbidity of their own language, an American university in Qatar is celebrating "the creative possibilities for expressing oneself and one's experiences through writing - in a language other than his native tongue."

"The Writer's Craft: Teaching Creative Writing in Qatar", edited by Amal Al Malki, Ph.D., assistant teaching professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, is a book based on a collection of essays written by students of Al Malki's creative writing course - in English.

Al Malki says that her students "were encouraged to acquire both comfort and competence in a variety of English genres - but, not really to mimic the English of a native speaker."

Even more fascinating is how Al Malki explains the difference between writing in Arabic versus writing in English: "Many students in Education City had grandparents who were illiterate, and have parents who are literate primarily in Arabic. The students find themselves the first generation cultivating two languages, and two identities. They see the Arabic language as the language of family and religion, and English as their global self - the language in which they can relate their pride in their Arabic heritage to the world."

I have seen and experienced very similar sentiments among first and second generation migrants in Australia - but it didn't relate to "pride in one's heritage" as much as to the innate ability of English to express the inexpressible in Arabic - alternative identities, erotica, technology, theories of science that have not yet caught in Arabic, for which there are no terminologies in that language.

Arabs face huge obstacles in gaining access to western knowledge, the most significant hurdle being the language barrier between them and the industrialised
nations to the north that generate the majority of technical/social/philosophical innovations.

This situation is further complicated by the lack of clarity regarding the correct Arabic equivalent for numerous technical/scientific terms. The region speaks various dialects, and there is often no distinct or standard term for technological innovations. Often, Arabs from different countries in the region are forced to use a third language (mostly English) in order to communicate that sort of knowledge.

I am not a proponent of conspiracy theories, but when much of the teaching material at science courses in Middle Eastern universities is only available in either English or French as there are no Arabic translations, while students are often given texts in English or French while receiving instruction in Arabic during class time, it makes one wonder how Arabic could ever evolve and catch up?

This is a proverbial shooting yourself in the foot.

It is also a great time for lexicographers of all colours to start producing real dictionaries for a real, 21st century, Arab world. Enough esoterica. Sufis need technology, too :-)


For all your English to Arabic and vice versa translations that will help you expand your business into the Middle East visit Arabic Communication Experts at http://www.arabic.com.au/.

Equal Rights, Unequal Pay

I read with interest the address by Joris de Bres, Race Relations Commissioner, at the Annual General Meeting of Interpreting New Zealand, Multicultural Services Centre, held in Wellington on the 17th of this month.

The right to an interpreter is enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: “to have the free assistance of an interpreter if they cannot understand or speak the language used in court (Article 14.3(f)). So is the right to legal representation. Otherwise, it amounts to the miscarriage of justice, which is a grave offence.

A lawyer in Australia charges over $200.00 just to look at you for an hour. An accredited, qualified court interpreter in Australia, after all things get factored in (travel time, delays, etc), is paid a paltry $16.00 per hour before tax. Both are professionals, both have qualifications. The diffrence? One is employed by himself (or a large law firm), while the other is employed by Australia's only employer - the Government - via a host of decent and not so decent agencies.

Talk about monopolisation!

Plus, there is no union to represent community-sector interpreters. So no access to legal redress for all sorts of other abuses that come bundled with low pay: no debriefing, harassment and intimidation of interpreters, no parking dues, often no travel fee, and no paid CPD opportunities. And then the one and only employer has the temerity to pay thousands of dollars to pack agency owners and so-called "end users" (still Government) for a whole day of fruitless discussions about the lack of retention of interpreters (or good ones at least).

Is it so hard to fathom, or is our public service slightly intellectually disabled?

Palinese?

First we had Dubya.. Now we have Wasilla.

"Now, some of you may think Sarah introduced “refudiate” to our common language last Sunday, when she tweeted Manhattan’s Muslims, begging them to “Pls refudiate” plans to build a mosque two blocks north of the Ground Zero.

You would be wrong.

Mama Grizzly actually gave the “word” its out-loud debut about a week before, when she bounced it off her fellow Fox News heavyweight and conservative stud muffin, Sean Hannity.

Sarah was opinionating, via live-feed from her kitchen overlooking Russia, calling on the Obamas to “refudiate” the NAACP’s charge of racism in the leadership of the Tea Party movement."

Peter Gelzinis from Boston Herald

Refudiate the fact, please, that something is very wrong with education in the USA if someone like Palin can become a politician. PLEASE??

Left or Right, East or West?

Prof. Lera Boroditsky on how language shapes thinking (or is it the other way round?). Absolutely must read! Read the comments, they are as good as the article, if not better.

• Russian speakers, who have more words for light and dark blues, are better able to visually discriminate shades of blue.
• Some indigenous tribes say north, south, east and west, rather than left and right, and as a consequence have great spatial orientation.
• The Piraha, whose language eschews number words in favor of terms like few and many, are not able to keep track of exact quantities.
• In one study, Spanish and Japanese speakers couldn't remember the agents of accidental events as adeptly as English speakers could. Why? In Spanish and Japanese, the agent of causality is dropped: "The vase broke itself," rather than "John broke the vase."

What happens in interpreting, then, when we need to bridge the east with left, or the few with five?

Cultural Translation - Not an Easy Bid

In Australia's professional LSP sector, the standard (and of course lazily comfortable) response to the question "Can translators be cultural advisers?" is "No". Too much responsibility is attached to trying to explain cultural issues A to a member of culture B, especially if B is a much more powerful and sort of mainstream culture, and A is a minority, often refugee (economic or otherwise) sub-culture. It is so much easier just interpreting words, usually making the discourse of the dominant language into something utterly alien and alienating in the receiving language.

I don't agree with this stance. A language is a vital vehicle of culture, it does not exist in a vacuum. Whether interpreting or translating, some things need to be "footnoted", explanations need to be added. It enriches both parties. But I agree it is hard.

I have been following this guy for a while now, and I am full of admiration for what he does. And today I came across another bunch of "lingovists" (language activists) from India - Video Volunteers. Their main issue, of course, is that India is a subcontinent of many cultures and many languages. And it is a subcontinent of many voiceless people.

How do you give a voiceless community a voice? You interpret and translate what they say into the language of the dominant discourse! Bravo..

Are we creating our own 'voiceless' communities by refusing to be cultural brokers?? Listen to Ted talking about what translation is REALLY for:

More on the GIGO Syndrome

I love Barbara Jungwirth posting on writing source text in "grammatically correct, clear structures free of spelling and punctuation errors" so as to facilitate the translation process, instead of getting the "Garbage In, Garbage Out" syndrome.

Barbara writes: "I was initially surprised at how frequently source text -- even fairly lengthy white papers and similar types of text -- appears not to have been proofread, let alone copy-edited. After reading a couple of books on technical and business matters recently, I am no longer surprised. Even books being printed and sold in bookstores don't seem to undergo much of a quality-assurance process any more. A case in point is Tamar Weinberg's "The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web", which I am in the process of reviewing for an upcoming issue of the Society for Technical Communication's magazine Intercom, which contains quite a few instances where sentences seem to have been hurriedly revised and fragments of the sentence's previous incarnation left behind or too much taken out. So if books aren't proofread any more, what can we expect from internal industry papers or instructions?"

Surprised, eh? I have a few books on translation studies that were published by very respectable institutions, and which contain errors. It is human to err. It is unprofessional to write slovenly, however. However, since the generation currently coming into force as editors and writers grew up on cut-and-paste, SMS and the Microsoft spell-checker, and without the benefit of being taught any serious usage of English at school, we can only expect to see more of this.

It is the translator's job to "leave source text errors in the source text" and provide a clean translation. Provided, of course, the translator knows an error when they see one. SMS your professional body for advice, maybe?

Barbara states, correctly: "However, such poorly written source text not only hampers the flow of reading, it often also adds ambiguity to the text. After all, if there are two conjunctions when only one should be present, which of the two did the author intend to use?"

I just smiled.

Ambiguity is now called "creativity" and "innovation" in language. Rules are BAD. And for someone to understand what one conjunction versus two mean in a text, they must be my age :-)

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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/

The US Government Still "doesn't get it"

The Government Accountability Office reported on Thursday that Federal agencies must do more to improve employees' foreign language proficiencies.

David Maurer, director of GAO's homeland security and justice team said that DHS, in particular, has failed to take a comprehensive approach to assessing the foreign language capabilities of its employees and addressing any shortfalls despite several critical GAO reports. Jeff Neal, chief human capital officer at DHS, acknowledged the department does not have an overarching plan or program for foreign language skills.

"An effective program must be dynamic and responsive to changing situations," Neal said.

(Source: Government Executive.com)

Couldn't the same be said of any English-speaking business trying to enter foreign markets? All this money spent on copywriting, advertising and business meetings is going to waste if the produced materials do not actually address the target audience - that is, their potential clients and business partners.

And yet, when it comes to budgeting, the beneficial, intelligent use of language services comes as a not-so-high priority. Instead, business tend to depend on locals to tell them what to do. A bit like going to the barber to have your tooth extracted, if you ask me.

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

Predicting the Nakba in an Israeli Novel

A book I would love to translate (are you listening, Alon?) into Arabic. A book that MUST be translated into Arabic, and translated well.

House of Rajani (Harvill Secker - Random House UK), takes place in 1895 Jaffa. It records the diaries of Salah Rajani, a 12-year old Moslem child cursed with prophetical powers who foresees the rising of the Jewish state; and of a 27 year old Jewish colonist, new to the city of Jaffa, who takes both Salah's mother and their house.

Arab Israelis – among them Radio Cairo correspondent Khamis Abulafia and politician Ahmed Tibi – have called the book "riveting" and claim to find an echo of the Palestinian narrative embedded within.

The House of Rajani was awarded the Sapir prize in 2009, but two weeks after the public announcement on Television, the award was withdrawn due to allegations of a conflict of interest.

Alon says that the main catalyst to write the book came from a deja vu feeling: "The initial catalyst for writing it came from a scene I envisioned one day as I sat in a Tel Aviv café: all at once I stripped the present reality of its clothes – the Bauhaus buildings, the uniquely Israeli window blinds, the ugly air-conditioning units, the ficus trees, the asphalt sidewalks, the low stone walls – and I could picture the orchards and groves and prickly pear cactuses of the Palestinians who had lived there in the past. I shuddered, and at that moment I decided to try to pass that feeling along to my readers in a historical novel about Tel Aviv's Palestinian past and about the first wave of Jewish immigration."

An expert from the novel can be read 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/

Being Fast

Ken of the 1-800 Translate company is blogging about Speed.. not the kind that makes you unwell, but the kind that makes you productive.

"You’ve got to do it right, but you’ve got to do it fast too. How fast? It all depends. Most translators in most languages can do somewhere between 2500 and 3000 words per day. That works out to about 300 words per hour. That’s unique words, now, so if the materials to be translated have a lot of repetition (say 50%), then the translator is effectively translating 5000 words instead of 2500 (...) Terminology management, machine pre-translation, and lots of other stuff can push those numbers much higher (...) Edit and proof take more time, say around 1000 words per hour, each, depending on the quality of the original and the talents and diligence of the editors. Traffic becomes a concern, too, in that the document has to be scheduled and assigned to the appropriate linguist by the appropriate project manager or language manager. So all the expectations we have for words per hour get tossed out the window if the one-and-only language manager is backed up or simply having a bad day. "

When all else fails, Ken throws in more translators, but complains that we are like cats, that is, there is more than one way to skin us. Thanks, Ken. I agree that as a bunch of professionals, we find it difficult to agree on anything, starting from translation theory and ending with which style manual is best to use. Don't worry, though - if the automation market keeps growing at the speed it does currently, our own productivity will kill all cats in the linguistic neighbourhood. That achieved, your only worry will be software crashes.

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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/

Weaving Trust

Here is an excerpt from a recent interview with Mark Tappling, the CEO of Language Weaver, a venture-backed firm which develops language translation software:

"What we've discovered on the commercial business side, is that there is a massive need for translation of digital content on the Internet. But, because of the large volume of digital content out there, most of it simply is not being considered for translation, because there's just not enough money, people, or time. That said, we made an entry into the commercial market in the digital content space. In order for that to be credible, we found that there was a lack of trust--most people do not think translation software works well enough to be commercially viable. Our strategy was twofold--one, was to go out and get brand name customers, and to translate their content to such a high quality, with no human oversight, that they'd be willing to post that on the internet. We've been able to achieve that (...) The second thing we needed to do, was to engage our users trust. In order to do that, they needed to know when a translation was good or bad. So, we established a patented algorithm--a trust score--which automatically ranks a translation from 1 to 5, five being great, one being poor, so that a customer can determine the trust of that. We calibrated that to our customers own, native speakers, who scored them, so that everyone has trust in the score. That has taken the risk out of the conversation, because we only ask customers to pay when the translations are good."

Is that bit about "no human oversight" giving anyone a chill? If their MT is such high quality, how come Google is struggling? Something is telling me that their average score is around 3/5 and that they sort of provide a tiered system: if it is mediocre, we will get it reviewed by humans, unless of course you are happy with being mediocre in language X (which most of their clients would be, since any language other than English is an enigma and for a pragmatic English-speakers, enigmas are best left at mediocre levels). So close enough is good enough, and if their algorithm produced "3" is 30% better than the "5"s of other MTs, they aren't doing bad.

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/

Marian Schwartz Interview

Boston Globe interviewed Marian Schwartz, the Austin-based acclaimed translator of Russian fiction, history, biography, and criticism. Her most recent translations include Ivan Goncharov’s 19th-century novel “Oblomov” and Olga Slavnikova’s futuristic novel “2017.” Schwartz is also the principal English translator of the works of Nina Berberova.

Schwartz started by defining a "good" translation as one which "readers like". With my due respect to all readers of various temperaments, IQs and levels of intelligence - the fact that I love fries does not make the fries a health food item. I read Bulgakov's books both in Polish (which is a close relative of Russian) and Arabic, so I knew a bit about the hazards of translations before I landed the Glenny English version - and so I can say that the English boo in question shares a title with Bulgakov, and that's where the story ends.

Schwartz also states that in her opinion a translation cannot be bad when it gives people access to works that they would never otherwise have read. But are they actually reading the book they would have read if they could, say, read French, or Spanish, or Arabic? Or is it a book written by the translator and passed under the pseudonym of some foreign dude with a literary reputation? If I say "I am hungry" and Ms Schwartz translates it as "Sam is experiencing stomach pain and would like a steak" - is that representing faithfully what I said? I know she wouldn't - she is too brilliant a translator for that. It is just a rhetorical question, and I hope Marian was not watering down her IQ because this was a newspaper interview!

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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/

When a PC Validates Your Language...

Back to Dr. David Harrison and endangered languages - Harrison believes language revitalization will be one of the most important trends in linguistics over the next couple of decades, and he believes companies need to get on board.

He is calling on technology companies, such as Microsoft, to help kids engender language. "The Microsoft Local Language Program can empower indigenous communities from the very moment when children in those communities first encounter a technology. It is a powerful thing for children to see their native language on a computer or on cell phone in a high tech medium. It validates the language and encourages them not to abandon the language. It shows them that their language is neither backwards nor obsolete and that it has use in the modern world and has value.”

It used to be different.

When I was growing up, the value of my language and its prestige came automatically as the result of the culture enshrined in it. I had Polish, Yiddish, English and Arabic spoken at home, then picked up a bit of Russian at school. None of the speakers of these languages needed the worth of their language validated by some PC.

It worries me immensely that kids now need to see their lingo on a hand-held phone screen to believe that it is OK to learn it. Amidst the many extinctions I am surrounded with - species of plants and animals, human languages, humanities subject at undergraduate level, common sense and politeness - here comes the extinction of the human wetware.

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/

Open Source Corpora from Meedan

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/

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/

Revisiting Sacred Texts

The British Guardian asks if the spirit of the original religious text can be adequately conveyed in a different language.

Alexander Goldberg compares this seeking for the original to translate to interpreting art. And since "G-d is good at Hebrew", the knowledge of the original Torah is of paramount importance to Jews - except that Biblical Hebrew is sort of dead, and Aramaic is best spoken by the Iraqi Christians - not the best candidates for translating the Torah into English! The question then becomes who has the sufficient knowledge or who has the power to interpret.

Dr Usama Hasan, a senior lecturer at Middlesex University, tells a story of misrepresentation that made me smile: "When I first participated in electronic discussions about religion as an undergraduate about 20 years ago, I began all my posts with, "In the name of God." This was the standard translation of bismillah, a phrase that prefixes all 114 chapters of the Qur'an bar one, and by which Muslims start all kinds of daily activities (...) One of the other students responded with, "In the name of myself, since I can't speak for God … " Whilst other colleagues asked him to apologise, fearing that another humourless Muslim would be offended and disengage, I was creased with laughter. But I took his point, and ever since that exchange I have tended to use the prayer-like "With the name of God" for my own correspondence, reserving "In the name of God" for translations of the Qur'an. This illustrates the difficulty of dealing with nuanced religious texts."

Language is a vehicle of meanings, and one of the arguments cited to support the disputed existence of mentalese, in which we allegedly think, is precisely the possibility of translation between languages. For Dr. Hasan, "the best translation of the Qur'an is in the language of action."

Heather McDougall, a music teacher with interest in comparative religions, maintains that in the beginning was Logos, and then it got translated into English..as "word", "reason" or "intellect". Logos is a difficult concept to translate, a bit like the Na'avi "I see you". She then talks about mistranslations of the Revelation of St. John by certain door-knocking groups. But any translation is an interpretation, and any interpretation is by default subjective. Some see the Lamb. Some see the FBI. Some see Bin Laden.

I tend to see Bedlam. That, too, is subjective.

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/

Translating Surveys

Jeffrey Henning of VoVici has a series of excellent articles about preparing multilingual surveys and questionnaires. He does not start at the translation process, but goes further back and concentrates on designing. His advice:

(1)The biggest mistake you can make is to assume that you simply have to translate the English questionnaire into other languages.

(2) When you think about the problem as one of localization, you realize that you need different editions of the questionnaire for different markets.

(3) Write the master questionnaire with translation in mind.

(4) Design the questionnaire up front to minimize open-ended questions.

(5) A survey translation is not just a translation of the survey itself.

(6) Don't submit the master questionnaire for translation until it is "final final".

(7) Back translate the survey into the native language of the survey author.

And the DON'Ts?

(1) Do not use free translation software.

(2) Don't give it to someone who is not a professional translator.

(3) Don't be in a hurry. Give it plenty of time.

(4) Don't be stingy on back-translating.

(5) Don't under-budget. It costs.

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 importance of Multilingualism

"Multilingualism, which can be defined as the harmonious accommodation of different languages spoken within a common space, therefore becomes an essential component of educational and cultural policies, to which attention must increasingly be paid," said Irina Bokova, director-general of UNESCO, in a statement on the occasion of International Mother Day Language 2010.

"At the same time, the learning of foreign languages and, as a result, the individual ability to use several languages encourages openness towards diversity and understanding of other cultures. As such, it must be promoted as a constructive and structural element of modern education."

Because of the increased pace of communication in our globalized world, translation is enjoying a level of growth unprecedented in the history of humanity, Bokova said. "For it to become a genuine tool for reciprocal dialogue and knowledge, we must promote a more diversified and even more balanced context of cultural and scientific exchange.

"Multilingualism, the learning of foreign languages and translation are three strategic axes for the language policies of tomorrow. On the occasion of this 11th International Mother Language Day, I am appealing to the international community to give the mother language, in each of these three axes, its rightful, fundamental place, in a spirit of respect and tolerance which paves the way for peace," Bokova said.

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/