Non-Standard Varieties in Translation

Posted by Saqer Almarri on February 16, 2013. No comments.

A common challenge in literary translation is the issue of a non-standard variety of language being used in the text. Literature has no shortage of using dialects and varieties that can seem unusual when written: Cockney in Pygmalion of GB Shaw, African American English in A Raisin in the Sun of Lorraine Hansberry, or Joual form of Québécois French in Michel Tremblay’s Les Belles-Sœurs, and a created variety of English that Zachry spoke in Cloud Atlas and the simple speech of the neanderthals of William Golding’s The Inheritors in contrast to the complex speech of the new humans.

The solutions to this challenge is varied. It’s common enough that it becomes often discussed. Since I started my MA at AUS, I’ve discussed this problem more times than I can count. I’m hardly a month into my doctorate studies and I’ve discussed this issue twice. The solutions I’ve seen are three.

The first option is to ignore non-standardness in the source text. I see this as highly problematic. Often the contrast between the standard and non-standard varieties of a language tell us something. It is a detail that is difficult to ignore when read in the source text. Take The Inheritors as an example, the story is about a group of neanderthals who speak in a very simple way, whereas the new humans at the end of the novel are capable of using complex language (For a discussion of this see MAK Halliday’s 1971 paper “Linguistic function and literary style”, this was republished here and here). How do you carry along this contrast when you use one standard variety all through the text?

The second option is to force yourself to find a non-standard variety of the target language that is “comparable” (intentionally scare-quoted) to the non-standard variety used in the source text. I scare-quote comparable for a reason: will you really find a variety that has the same set of stereotypes as the source text’s variety? By doing so you could be introducing a different context into the text when translating. For example, when translating a text using dialectal features of Southern American English into Arabic, would you use a dialect among the dialects of the Bedouin Arabs? The sociolinguistic context of each variety is different, therefore incomparable. However, it was a successful strategy when Michel Tremblay’s play was translated into English, the variety used in place of Joual was Glaswegian Scots: The Guid Sisters. (Scots, in my opinion and in the opinion of many, counts as a language separate from English, but it is often portrayed as a dialect of English.)

The third option is to create one from scratch. You could take up the standard but oversimplify it in the case of the neanderthals, possibly abbreviate and contract expressions in the case of Les Belles-Sœurs and Pygmalion, or create lexical and syntactical features that seem unusual in the case of Cloud Atlas. This is my preferred strategy, I see it as a chance for a translator to input some of his creativity into the text he’s working on. This is not a new strategy, it’s been used before and often. Take for example the case of translations into Modern Hebrew (this example I found in Translators through History 2012: 53), which was for a time undergoing a period of revival and, because of two thousand years of strictly liturgical use, it lacked a spoken variety. I quote from the book the following paragraph:

“Translators had to resolve these difficulties, since the source texts included both spoken language and references to modern phenomena. This need was met by renewing Hebrew and extending its own range of resources. This included reviving old words by changing or enlarging their original meaning, giving new meaning to words whose old meaning had been forgotten and, in addition, coining new words or creating neologisms, on the basis of existing grammatical forms. When translators wanted to create ‘a spoken variant’, they sometimes disrupted the old language on purpose by using idioms incorrectly. Hebrew also benefited from its contact with various source languages, enriching the stock of Hebrew resources by imitating grammatical and syntactical forms, borrowing words, and translating expressions literally in the form of calques.”

I see this strategy as not merely creative, but also beneficial for any language, you’re giving the language you’re working with a new way of expressing ideas and describing experiences. The paragraph right after the one quoted above says how Hebrew fiction writers continue to use fictitious spoken language in their writings.

MA Thesis: Ideology in the Translation of Legal Treaties

Posted by Saqer Almarri on January 30, 2013. 4 comments.

In April, I completed my MA studies at the American University of Sharjah. My thesis is now available online for viewing at the following address: http://hdl.handle.net/11073/4055, direct PDF link here and here.

My thesis advisor was Dr. Basil Hatim. The abstract is quoted below, with links added:

The British Colonial Era produced a number of international treaties, such as the 1820 General Treaty of Peace with the Arab Tribes. The treaty produced in English was translated into Arabic three times. This study analyzes the differing discourses between the three translations in order to uncover the influences that played a role in the production of the translation. The study analyzes differences in skopos, word choice, and sentence structure in order to uncover the influences. This study demonstrates, despite the common assumption that legal translations are literal, that legal treaties may be translated differently depending on the context and cause of its translation. The study concludes that significant differences in the goals of the translation can result in significant differences in the discourses between the three translations.

Comments and critiques are obviously welcome.

Language Diversity in the Gulf: The Non-Arabics

Posted by Saqer Almarri on January 5, 2013. No comments.

This is the second of the two-post series related to the linguistic situation in the Gulf region. The previous post was be on the variety of Arabics in the region.

The sociolinguistic nature of the southern coast of the Gulf only (the northern coast is quite diverse too) is even yet more complex when taking into consideration the non-Arabic languages spoken in the communities. Much of the diversity lies in the Lower Gulf region, that is the UAE and Oman, with a variety of Indo-Iranian languages and South Arabian languages.

Much of the Indo-Iranian languages arrived within the last few centuries with migrations of merchants across the Gulf, with the notable exception of Kumzari. Kumzari is an endangered language spoken by the indigenous Kumazirah community in the Musandam peninsula, it is the only Indo-Iranian language to be historically indigenous to the southern coast of the gulf. It is closely related to Luri, a language spoken on the northern coast.

Kumzari is endangered because the official focus of the Gulf societies is on the official language and not the heritage languages. A recent report by the AFP on two researchers (Christina van der Wal and Erik Anonby) working on the Kumzari language notes that the language used in schools is Arabic, and not the community’s mother tongue. Recently there has been a bit more coverage on this language in The National, including a video. The case is similar for Lawati, Lari (also known in the region as Ajami with its varieties like Bastaki, Evazi, Khonji, Gerashi, etc.), Balochi, and Jadgali, all of which are endangered languages; they are not taught in schools and often lack documentation and research.

Only recently have there been efforts to document the region’s endangered languages, Lawati has been undergoing documenting by two Omani scholars, Amel Salman and Nafla Kharusi had teamed up to work on the sound system of the Lawati language, along with studies on the identity of Lawati and Swahili speakers in Oman.

There are also other non-Arabic languages spoken in the region, but also understudied and endangered. Marie-Claude Simeone-Senelle surveys these languages in a chapter of The Semitic Languages and lists them as six Modern South Arabian languages: Mehri, Harsusi, Bathari, Hobyot, Jibbali (or Shehri), and Soqotri.

The least endangered amongst those is Mehri, a South Arabian language originally spoken in the south of Oman and in Yemen, but also spoken in Eastern Saudi Arabia. It is the most comprehensively documented languages among the Modern South Arabian languages. Harry Stroomer collected a corpus of Mehri texts from Oman in 1999 made up of stories and poems, and Aaron Rubin published a descriptive grammar of Mehri in 2012 based on that corpus. Along with that, quite recently, the American Insitute for Yemeni Studies published a poetry collections titled the Diwan of Hajj Dakon translated from Mehri in English and Arabic. The rest of the languages are not as widely spoken (some may be extinct), and not as comprehensively studied as Mehri is.

Swahili, too, is a part of the linguistic diversity in the region. It is spoken by Zanzibari Arabs (many who migrated to Yemen, Oman, and the Emirates after the Zanzibari Revolution and the collapse of the Sultanate) and Afro-Arabs who were involved in the trade (including the slave trade) between the East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.

A majority of these languages are endangered or are facing serious decline in the face of the rise of Arabic, the state-promoted language. Many of the elder speakers of those languages did not teach their children these languages, and those who do do not speak it as fluently as their parents and grandparents. These languages are not taught in schools as heritage languages, and they are not taught by private community organizations in order to preserve them.

Despite the grim situation of these languages, some have become aware of the value of these languages to the society. In June 2010, a two-day symposium held by the Omani Society for Writers and Literati tackled the issue of translating Omani literature into Arabic from non-Arabic languages. This is merely a small gesture from the intellectuals of Oman to help study these heritage languages. However, more must be done to bring attention to these languages and their need for revitalizing.

Documenting and revitalizing these languages requires the heritage speakers to participate and take interest in keeping their languages alive. Only they can have access to their languages’ poetry, stories, and texts. These texts can be collected into a corpus from which linguistic description can be provided. Without the speakers themselves undertaking the responsibility for the upkeep of their language, nothing can be done to prevent these languages and their related cultures from becoming extinct.

Documenting these languages is a first step to helping revitalize these languages. From dictionaries, linguistic corpora, and grammar descriptions of Mehri and Kumzari, teachers and linguists can develop educational resources to help teach the language, maybe even set up a primary school to teach Mehri and Kumzari to the younger generation, and maybe broadcasting radio shows in the languages, as is the case of various Native American communities and the Maori community in New Zealand. Each of those languages mentioned above deserve to be taught to the new generations, to maintain a connection to the rich culture of their ancestors.

Collecting linguistic resources and organizing them takes a lot of effort on the part of communities and researchers. The University of Hawai’i and Google recently launched The Endangered Languages Project aimed at helping communities in collecting and sharing resources on their endangered languages. This project lists on its website a few of the languages I’ve mentioned in this article as “at risk”, “endangered” and “severely endangered”. It would be encouraging if the linguistics faculty in the region would take up their responsibility to study the local linguistic diversity, and contribute positively to the preservation and development of these languages and their communities.

The language situation in the region may seem grim but that can be changed. And this change can only be achieved through the will of the heritage speakers themselves, and through the awareness of the society that among them are speakers of a diverse group of languages. The Arabian peninsula is home to more than just Arabic, it is vital that its society becomes aware of its diversity and participate in maintaining it.

Language Diversity in the Gulf: The Arabics

Posted by Saqer Almarri on January 4, 2013. One comment.

This is the first of a two-post series related to the linguistic situation in the Gulf region. The next post will be on the variety of indigenous languages of the region that are not Arabic.

The communities of the Gulf region across the last century have witnessed many changes. The political and economic aspects of these changes are the most commonly commented upon, but not much talk about the effect of these changes on the socio-linguistic aspect of the Gulf communities, apart from the occasional news article that bemoans the decline of Arabic in the face of English. While true that Arabic as a language faces competition from English, the situation is far more complex than that.

With an exception of Iran, whose official language is Persian, the countries around the Gulf use Arabic as their official language. This is the simple description of the language situation. The complex description (and the one closer to reality) is not so easy to describe in one post. I will focus in this two-post series on the sociolinguistic reality of the countries in the Gulf, specifically on the UAE and Oman part of the Gulf. The society of these countries might use Modern Standard Arabic officially, but deal with a multitude of varieties of Arabic, and non-Arabic languages (see the next post).

The Arabic language in the Gulf region is made up of various dialects, and these are typically clumped together in category called Gulf Arabic. However the distinction between the dialects is not an easy one; linguists have long struggled to present a typology that allows the dialects to be differentiated (and will likely continue to do so).

The Arabic language used officially is one called the fuṣḥa (the Eloquent Standard), this standard form is commonly called by researchers as Modern Standard Arabic, a form that developed out of the Classical Arabic language which is used in the Qur’an and texts from the early era of Islamic history and the dialect of Quraish. Differentiating between Classical Arabic and Modern Standard is difficult even for Arabic-speakers, both are called fuṣḥa. The Classical Arabic was based on Qur’anic form of Arabic became the de facto standard of Arabic mainly due to its elevated status as the language of scripture.

Though Qur’anic Arabic later became the foundation of Standard Arabic, the non-standard vernacular varieties existed and continued to exist. The differentiation between the vernacular Arabics is not a simple issue, some linguists differentiate between Bedouin (or Tribal) and Sedentary (or Non-Bedouin) dialects, such as Reem Bassiouney in her 2009 book on Arabic Sociolinguistics, others differentiate between them geographically, such as Kees Versteegh’s The Arabic Language, who set out five regional dialect groupings, among them is the one that concerns us the most: the dialects of the Arabian peninsula, some of which are varieties that exist on the coast of the Gulf. The dialects of Arabic in the Gulf region are diverse, where multiple varieties of Sedentary dialects exist, and likewise with the Bedouin dialects.

Among the Bedouin dialects are the dialects which now form the most common varieties of Khaleeji/Gulf Arabic, while not always homogeneous, the Gulf Arabic dialect groups a set of varieties under common grammar and phonology, though there are differences as this dialect group spans the entire coast of the Gulf, and is spoken in Kuwait, Ahwaz, the Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. The most prominent dialect among the Gulf Arabics is the Kuwaiti Arabic. This became prominent after Kuwait gained independence from Britain, and set up a rich and free media infrastructure that allowed other Arab societies to be acquainted with the dialect. Among the research produced on the varieties of Gulf Arabic includes Kristen Brustad’s 2000 book on the Syntax of Spoken Arabic, which studied Kuwaiti Arabic along with other prominent Arabic dialects, while Benjamin Hoffiz in 1995 produced his doctoral thesis on the morphology of the Dubai dialect of Arabic. Hamdi Qafisheh who chaired the committee examining Hoffiz’s research, had produced A Short Reference Grammar of Gulf Arabic in 1977, and went on to publish NTC’s Gulf Arabic-English Dictionary. There is also a notable (but hard-to-find) Arabic-Arabic dictionary produced by Faleh Handhal and published by the UAE’s Ministry of Media and Culture in 1978 (the copy I have is a second edition from 1998). Other Bedouin dialects are related to the Najdi dialects, a set of varieties spoken by different tribal groups within the Peninsula.

Among the Sedentary and Non-Bedouin dialects, is the Shiḥḥi Arabic dialect, though spoken by a group of tribes, is distinct phonologically from the Bedouin dialects. This dialect may be one of the oldest Arabic dialects in the region, popular history suggests that these tribes are of the Azd Arabs in Dibba led by Laqit bin Malik who refrained from paying zakat to the Caliph Abu Bakr resulting in a Battle of Dibba in 632.

Another sedentary dialect is the Baḥarna dialect spoken by communities of Baḥarna Arabs, which are concentrated in Bahrain and the eastern Saudi Arabia, but also exist in other parts of the region such as the UAE, and Oman. Other sedentary varieties include Omani Arabic, Dhofari Arabic.

Significant research has been produced on the Baḥrani dialect, the most extensive of which was a sociolinguistic description of the language in Language and linguistic origins in Bahrain (1982) by Mahdi Abdalla Al-Tajir, and in Language variation and change in a modernising Arab State (1987) by Clive Holes.

The rise of regional media, some of which use Modern Standard Arabic, others which use vernacular varieties of Arabics, have played a role in leveling out the regional varieties. For example, Bedouin Arabic is commonly used in television series portraying Bedouin epics and reality shows with competing poets in the genre of Nabati poetry, resulting in many youth adopting linguistic features of Bedouin forms of Arabic. The same is the case with youth who grew up watching Kuwaiti comedies in the 1970s and 1980s, and adopted dialectal features of the Kuwaiti variety of Gulf Arabic.

The same issue exists in the research literature which studies a generic form “Khaleeji/Gulf Arabic” without worrying too much on the differences within different forms of Khaleeji Arabic, or in the case of the United Arab Emirates Univesity, an “Emirati Arabic” studying a post-leveling national variety of Arabic. For example, the Emirati Arabic Corpus currently being produced by Dimitrios Ntelitheos of United Arab Emirates University is focusing on collecting “Emirati” Arabic that exists in Emirati audio and visual media, such as radio and television shows. This effort is without a doubt to be commended, but also there is much need for research in pre-leveling varieties of Arabic.

I suggest this because I believe there is not one Emirati Arabic, but many Emirati Arabics (Shihhi, Bedouin, Coastal, Bahrani, among others), and many Saudi Arabics (Hijazi, Najdi-Bedouin, Qusaimi, Qatifi, among others), and many Omani Arabics (Musqati, Dhofari, Bedouin, among others), and possibly even various Kuwaiti Arabics.

Reviving Translation in the Arab World

Posted by Saqer Almarri on November 3, 2012. No comments.

Recently two articles were published in the Emirati media discussing the (sorry) state of the translation movement in the Arab World. The first article was published by the Dubai-based daily Albayan by Abdullah Abdulqader titled “Arabs and Translation: A Recession”, the second article was published by the Abu Dhabi-based The National authored by translation studies professor Said Faiq titled “What Arabia Lost in Translation”. (Said Faiq had taught me a few courses during my time at AUS.)

Abdulqader’s article discusses the experience of translators in Egypt and the state of translation in the Arab World. The previous regime in Egypt, he writes, was capable of developing the translation industry and the translation movement, but actively prevented its development. The regime would only organize conferences and “carnivals” on translation which always result in one recommendation: “We must overcome our terrible setback in translation from other languages into Arabic”. All of this prevented Egypt from setting up a comprehensive strategy for the translation movement, while lacking that strategy would only lead to more chaotic and wasted translation efforts. Along with that, due to a lack in financial backing by the state, and a lack of mentorships by experienced translators, translation graduates avoid the translation industry in Egypt, opting instead for work in the tourism industry. He provides a few recommendations of how the wheels of translation could be set into motion: create a bibliographic database of all translations into Arabic published between the beginning of the 20th century and now, creating comprehensive national and pan-Arab strategies to promote the translation of texts that can fill the large knowledge gap in the Arab World. Promoting the setting up of specialized translation organizations, that produce translations of texts in certain fields.

In Faiq’s article, he discusses the problems that face the translation industry in the Arab World. He writes that social awareness about the importance of translation is dismal, mostly because translation is seen as secondary to scientific and cultural production. Like Abdulqader, the industry lacks an open-access bibliographic database of translated works. However training of translators and the teaching of Arabic and foreign languages needs to be reformed, along with education in general. The translation movement would have to be organized, and coordinated on a pan-Arab level with a strategic plan clarifying how texts can be chosen.

In both articles, the authors both suggested that solutions would depend on a pan-Arab strategy with regards to the translation movement. I believe that is almost impossible, but the ideas are not.

If a certain (pan-Arab, state, or non-state) organization takes up the task of producing an openly-accessible bibliographic database of translated works, then the first step towards a strategy has been taken. It doesn’t have to be a comprehensive database of all translations available in 22 countries. Each country can have its own database.

The databases don’t have to be merged with other databases, instead a search engine can crawl these databases. Through that the gaps of texts-to-be-translated can be identified. These gaps may point at the knowledge gaps. That would allow a strategy to be devised by the countries, and possibly by other stake-holders.

Another issue mentioned was the training of translators. The state (and certainly other stakeholders) can sponsor the training of translators through scholarships and research grants. The industry would have to step up to their role of training translators through internships and mentorships. The same can be said with the issue of acquiring translation rights, stakeholders (including the state) should sponsor the process, especially when it comes to translating works that are not popular subjects.

Izutsu on Arabic terminology

Posted by Saqer Almarri on October 28, 2012. One comment.

I finally got a chance to read Toshihiko Izutsu‘s God and Man in the Qur’an (the edition I just read is from 2002 published in Kuala Lumpur, though it was first published in 1964). This is an extremely interesting work on the semantics of the Qur’an, specifically how the Qur’anic text appropriated concepts from several different pre-Islamic traditions within the Arabian religions (the paganistic, hanafitic, and Judeo-Christian religions alike).

On page 65 of the edition I have (or Chapter 2, Section II), he describes the difference between the two words تلفون [telefūn] and هاتف [hātif], classifying the first as a transparent term, while the other is semi-transparent:

“In this respect, the contrast, again in modern Arabic, between telefūn and hātif, both meaning ‘telephone’, is very interesting and illuminating. Or as we have just seen, completely ‘transparent’, being nothing but an arabized form of the word ‘telephone’ itself, and the other is obviously ‘semi-transparent’. ‘Semi-transparent’ here means that the word has its own long history behind in the Arabic language and that this heavy history still tends to make itself felt whenever the word is used. Hātif in classical Arabic means “somebody whose voice you hear but whom you do not see anywhere around”. In this we find the word often used in old Sufi literature in reference to some mysterious voice calling a future mystic from somewhere in heaven, urging him to renounce the worldly pleasures and turn to otherworldliness. The existence of such a weighty past naturally offers a serious obstacle to the word’s becoming a simple sign of a new idea introduced from the West only recently. Compared with its rivals telefūn, which is ‘transparent’ from the very outset, hātif finds itself in a very difficult situation because it has to overcome the obstacle before it can become a perfect Arabic equivalent of the word ‘telephone’.”

I think it would be interesting to take note of a consequence of each term. The transparent one is an arabized term, one that we can easily identify in other languages many of which are not relatives of Arabic. For example, the transparent Arabic تاكسي [tāksī] has its similar sounding cognates in other languages, especially those who have imported the term, like Japanese: タクシー[takushii].

The semi-transparent is a revival of a classical Arabic term. Izutsu suggests that the semi-transparent form carries a history that cannot be overcome, but it is the result of a strategy of reviving (relatively) obsolete terms. This is from the active recycling of terminology and vocabulary from Classical Arabic into Modern Arabic. The semi-transparent Arabic سيّارة أجرة [sayyārat 'ujrah], although it does not carry much of a history, it does require thinking: is it just a rented car? Or does that include a driver? That is the problem of being ideological on the Arabic-only terminology: we might end up creating non-precise fuzzy terminology.

This problem, I have no doubt, occurs with many other languages. Linguists, especially terminologists and translators need to be aware of this problem, especially the problem of being controlled by an ideology of linguistic purism.

Angelika Neuwirth on Qur’anic Rhetoric

Posted by Saqer Almarri on July 9, 2012. No comments.

Angelika Neuwirth, of the Corpus Coranicum, discusses, in a half-hour lecture, the philological study of the Qur’an. She focuses on its “historical, literary and theological entanglements”. This lecture was given at the Warburg Institute of the University of London. The lecture is quite interesting and focuses on the philological study of the Qur’an.

At 20:00, she discusses why the Qur’an was not given as one complete text as is discussed by the Qur’an itself in 25:32, and how this is a strategy to allow the for the rephrasing and reiteration of utterances in the Qur’an. She suggests this strategy is to “stress the hermeneutical potential” of the text in order to allow Qur’an’s audience to think. She calls this reiterative/rephrasing character as targumization (relating to the targumim, which were exegetical paraphrases of the Hebrew Bible into Aramaic).

At 24:00, she suggests that the reiteration/targumization strategy is not only for intratextual utterances, but also intertextual to biblical and post-biblical texts. The example she gives for this is surah 112 in which she suggests that verse 1 echos the Jewish credo, including the use of the Hebrew sounding numeral أحد and not the regular Arabic form واحد (this is, I may add, in text linguistics, is called informativity). While verse 3 and 4 negate the theology of the Nicene creed while maintaining the rhetorical structure.

MAK Halliday on Language Evolution

Posted by Saqer Almarri on May 12, 2012. No comments.

I recently watched this lecture by MAK Halliday (father of the systemic functional framework) for the International Systemic Functional Congress 37 on the topic of language evolution and the history of languages. This is a fascinating topic and well worth the hour.

Linguistics and Politics

Posted by Saqer Almarri on April 6, 2012. No comments.

Robert de Beaugrande, in his last year, published on the CADAAD journal (volume 2, issue 1) an article discussing a method for critical discourse analysis. I quote the following from that article’s introduction (page 17):

“A distinguished colleague told me one must never allow politics to influence one’s academic career. But then she was a phonologist at a time when the great Dwight Bolinger described phonology as ‘the last refuge of the faint-hearted’.”

I often remember this cheeky statement when I think about research I can (and hope to) do. It reminds me that I should be aware that linguistics is involved in politics simply because, as a field, it studies the most important element in communication.

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