Arabic Translation

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Arabic Translation

Posted On : May-17-2011 | seen (659) times | Article Word Count : 573 |

According to Ethnologue (16th Edition, 2009), Arabic is the fourth most widely spoken language in the world, after Chinese, English and Spanish, with an estimated 221 million speakers. Most of them live in the Middle East and in North Africa. It is a Semitic language, part of the same family as Hebrew and Ahmaric, the main language of Ethiopia.
Arabic is the official language of 26 nation states and in its classical form it is the liturgical language of Islam, the language of the Qur’ān (or Koran). “Modern Standard Arabic” refers to the form of the language taught in colleges and schools throughout the Arab world, and is the language of government, private enterprise and the communications media. Although the basic vocabulary and syntactical structure of Modern Standard Arabic is derived directly from Islamic holy writings dating back to the 8th century, modern terms and expressions have been coined to make the language fully functional in the 21st century. Educated speakers of Modern Standard Arabic can understand each other, even if they learned their language in countries quite distant from each other. The written form employs the Arabic abjad, an “alphabet” with 28 basic letters, without consonants. Persian and Urdu are also written in this character system, which reads from right to left.
Of the numerous regional accents and dialects of spoken Arabic, a large proportion are mutually unintelligible, leading linguists to consider colloquial or dialectical Arabic to be really a family of different, yet related tongues, based on a common religious and academic tradition, but widely varying in terms of pronunciation and vocabulary.
Many educated native speakers of Modern Standard Arabic also read and speak English, due in part to the colonial tradition of Great Britain in Egypt, the Sudan and the Middle East. Most English-to-Arabic translation is performed by persons with this profile.
Some of the complications of rendering English to Arabic translation include converting the agglutinative tendency of English into Arabic vocabulary, in which the “root system” prevails. In other words, English tends to add words to other words, creating more distinct ideas. A simple example is “psychodrama.” Most Arabic words, on the other hand, are derived from a root, usually three letters long, which provides the basic concept. (Only consonants are considered.) Then other letters may be added before, after or among the root letters to further define the precise concept that the word must convey. The essential trick of adequate translation is to convert a series of English words into an appropriate Arabic equivalent, using variations on the roots. Obviously, an experienced translator may already be prepared for this exercise for the majority of simple concepts, but the process of “mapping” English into Arabic becomes increasingly tricky when dealing with abstract ideas and technical subject matter.
Good translation must proceed concept-by-concept, rather than phrase-by-phase, as the English concept of a sentence is not necessarily the same as the Arabic idea. Arabic usually starts its expression with the verb, then adding information about the actor, and finally, details about the person or thing acted upon.
In short, the able translator from English to Arabic must be intellectually nimble to be able to re-express the English-language idea accurately within the different conceptual structure of Arabic.
The other major challenge of translation from English to Arabic is the shift in alphabet and direction of printing – realities that make translation of web sites and desktop publishing applications especially exacting.

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<h1>Arabic Translation</h1> Author: <a href='http://www.articleseen.com/profile_Christopher Grey.aspx'>Christopher Grey</a> According to Ethnologue (16th Edition, 2009), Arabic is the fourth most widely spoken language in the world, after Chinese, English and Spanish, with an estimated 221 million speakers. Most of them live in the Middle East and in North Africa. It is a Semitic language, part of the same family as Hebrew and Ahmaric, the main language of Ethiopia.
Arabic is the official language of 26 nation states and in its classical form it is the liturgical language of Islam, the language of the Qur’ān (or Koran). “Modern Standard Arabic” refers to the form of the language taught in colleges and schools throughout the Arab world, and is the language of government, private enterprise and the communications media. Although the basic vocabulary and syntactical structure of Modern Standard Arabic is derived directly from Islamic holy writings dating back to the 8th century, modern terms and expressions have been coined to make the language fully functional in the 21st century. Educated speakers of Modern Standard Arabic can understand each other, even if they learned their language in countries quite distant from each other. The written form employs the Arabic abjad, an “alphabet” with 28 basic letters, without consonants. Persian and Urdu are also written in this character system, which reads from right to left.
Of the numerous regional accents and dialects of spoken Arabic, a large proportion are mutually unintelligible, leading linguists to consider colloquial or dialectical Arabic to be really a family of different, yet related tongues, based on a common religious and academic tradition, but widely varying in terms of pronunciation and vocabulary. 
Many educated native speakers of Modern Standard Arabic also read and speak English, due in part to the colonial tradition of Great Britain in Egypt, the Sudan and the Middle East. Most English-to-Arabic translation is performed by persons with this profile.
Some of the complications of rendering English to Arabic translation include converting the agglutinative tendency of English into Arabic vocabulary, in which the “root system” prevails. In other words, English tends to add words to other words, creating more distinct ideas. A simple example is “psychodrama.” Most Arabic words, on the other hand, are derived from a root, usually three letters long, which provides the basic concept. (Only consonants are considered.) Then other letters may be added before, after or among the root letters to further define the precise concept that the word must convey. The essential trick of adequate translation is to convert a series of English words into an appropriate Arabic equivalent, using variations on the roots. Obviously, an experienced translator may already be prepared for this exercise for the majority of simple concepts, but the process of “mapping” English into Arabic becomes increasingly tricky when dealing with abstract ideas and technical subject matter.
Good translation must proceed concept-by-concept, rather than phrase-by-phase, as the English concept of a sentence is not necessarily the same as the Arabic idea. Arabic usually starts its expression with the verb, then adding information about the actor, and finally, details about the person or thing acted upon.
In short, the able translator from English to Arabic must be intellectually nimble to be able to re-express the English-language idea accurately within the different conceptual structure of Arabic.
The other major challenge of translation from English to Arabic is the shift in alphabet and direction of printing – realities that make translation of web sites and desktop publishing applications especially exacting.
About the Author: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.greentranslations.com/arabic-translation"> Arabic translation</a> is a challenging language with many low quality service providers so be sure to employ only the top <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.greentranslations.com/arabic-translation"> English to Arabic translation</a>. Article Source: <a href='http://www.articleseen.com/Article_Arabic-Translation_62334.aspx'> http://www.articleseen.com/Article_Arabic Translation_62334.aspx</a>

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Arabic translation is a challenging language with many low quality service providers so be sure to employ only the top English to Arabic translation.

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