Re: Translating the Mouse !?

[Isam Bayazidi <bayazidi at arabeyes dot org>]

On Tuesday 01 October 2002 12:58, Gregg Reynolds wrote:
> In any case, I would discourage using transliterations in general;
> remember your terminology has the entire Arabic-speaking world as its
> audience, and most people are monolingual, so a transliteration will
> just be a nonsense string of letters to them.  Too, I don't see why
> Arabic should be compelled to use the same metaphors as English, since
> after all the goal is not really to translate English terminology but to
> come up with Arabic that "just works", i.e. it feels natural to
> Arabic-speakers (especially monolingual ones) and its semantics
> adequately covers the technical ideas involved.  So "mouse" is the word
> we use in English to designate that plastic thingee, since the metaphor
> works well; Arabs might call it anything the "fits" in Arabic culture.
> How about "@aDal" (gerbil) or "qird" (monkey) or even "quTaiTah" (kitty)?

Salam Gregg .. 
Your reply was right to the point .. but there are issues that we need to 
remember .. It is compatability with the current widly-used MS Arabic 
termenology .. 
How much we should Stick with it ? Due to MS influance in Computer World in 
the Arab countries, MS termenoloty became almost a standard that we can't get 
away from .. although there is a wide agreement between translators that the 
Arabic translation of MS is ugly .. we some time find ourselves forced to use 
it as we try to stick with the commonly used as much ODD as it is .. 

I would like to know if the german translators translate the word mouse to 
german-mouse .. is the russians translate the mouse to russian-mouse ?! or 
come up with a suitable OTHER name .. 



> This gets into another interesting area: should the Arabic documentation
> for e.g. Linux be localized to the various dialects?  I would think that
> might be a Good Thing for some docs, such as intros or tutorials.

About Dialects .. I am very much against it .. I use my dialect in speaking 
but people from all the Arab world read news papers in the SAME language .. 
although I may go to Morocco or Tunisia and understand absolutly nothing 
while I am in the streets .. I am 100% sure that when I buy a news paper or a 
book there it will be 100% understood .. same goes with the Tunisian when 
he/she comes to Amman .. See ..


> (sorry about using English; I'm using Mac OSX and don't yet have an
> Arabic-enabled email client.  Plus my Arabic writing is pretty bad. ;)

Well I am in the other hand ni Linux .. but not able to switch keyboard in 
Gnome2.0 .. I am thinking of looking for how to do it :-)
-- 
Yours,
Isam Bayazidi
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Arabeyes = Arabic + Linux
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