Translation Services Blog

To translators in the West, it might seem that there could be few professions as innocuous as our own. Generally, we all settle down at home and translate our projects in peace and tranquillity; this is certainly not the case in other parts of the world, however, as has often been reported within this site; now it seems that a translation of the Koran has landed one translator with a possible death sentence.

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The above idiom is, of course, very well known and basically espouses the rather sage principle of letting things be, minding ones own business and letting sleeping dogs lie…and the world would certainly be a much better place if most people embraced this ethos. In a recent report for the US military though, it seems that breeches of a similar policy currently in force, known as “don’t ask, don’t tell”, have lead to the sacking of over 58 specialist Arabic and Farsi translators as well as 12,500 other service personnel, from various branches of the forces.

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As translators, we know that the benefits of translation are manifold and too lengthy to comprehensively list; some of these benefits though, include the promotion of co-operation and understanding, an international dissemination of knowledge and culture and ultimately, the promotion of peaceful co-existence…it’s strange then that the authorities in a Southern Turkish prison have chosen to censor an inmate’s Kurdish translation of a Turkish literary work.

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The Kalima Translation Project (Kalima means ‘word’ in Arabic) is an Abu Dhabi based cultural initiative which is organised by the ADACH (The Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage) and is directly funded by Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan who is the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi. Its aims are to promote culture by the translation, publication and dissemination of written works from other cultures and languages into Arabic. The Kalima Translation Project has just reported the release of three recent translations to add to its corpus of already translated material; the works are:

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Turkish publisher Ragip Zarakolu has just been handed down a two year prison sentence for the crime of “insulting the Turkish Nation”. Now you might be wondering just what kind of major insult Zarakolu could have perpetrated that could have insulted the entire nation; well it seems that his crime was to have published a Turkish translation of “The Truth Will Set Us Free (Armenians and Turks reconciled)” by British author George Jerjian.

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As linguists we all know the benefits of website localisation in terms of gaining market share by diversifying into foreign markets, but recently a less often seen aim of website localisation has manifested itself…to promote the laudable aim of engendering peace and understanding between two formerly antagonistic countries.

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The latest reports from Washington have shown that the US Intelligence Community, as well as other Law Enforcement organisations are so short of decent translators of Arabic, Farsi and Pashto, that they have resorted to the never before sanctioned measure of recruiting immigrants to fill these posts. Until very recently, the recruitment of any first generation American with family ties abroad was strictly forbidden, however, such is the desperate need for these interpreters that the bar on using such personnel was rescinded earlier this year.

The great problem faced by the US establishment is that Arabic especially, is a very complex language for people outside of the Arabic Diaspora and is made all the more difficult because there is no modern standardised spoken form that spans the Arabic speaking world, so that a Somalian that happened to speak Arabic, might well not be understood by a Qatari that spoke ostensibly the same language. Additionally, even within an Arabic speaking country, there are likely to be a great dialectic variation; the only really common ground within Arabic is the ubiquitous knowledge of the specific type of Arabic used within the Koran.

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Now all of us who work within the Translation Services industry know the benefits of website translation and localisation; or think that we do. In actual fact, everyone that I have ever spoken to has certainly been able to tell me the benefits of such, however, when questioned further, are somewhat short of corroborative figures. I was quite pleased, therefore, when some hard facts came to light from the USA to throw some light upon the true benefits of website translations.

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IBM are of course best known as long established world leaders in computing hardware, networking infrastructure and consultancy services and are well known for their innovation and willingness to experiment with ideas and to branch out into new areas. This was demonstrated in 1997 when after some years of research they pitted their supercomputer Deep Blue against international chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov…the final result was that Deep Blue won the match, however, the event demonstrated the bravery and innovation present within IBM.

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You would imagine that in these days of uncertain security, the main proponent of global security issues would be ahead of, indeed, on top of their game. In a recent testimony to a US Congressional hearing, however, Bassem Youssef, Unit Chief for the FBI’s Communications Analysis Unit and the most senior Arab-American member if the FBI, has stated that due to chronic staffing shortages in FBI linguistic posts, the US would be unable to effectively defend America from attack.

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