Context Translation

["Maher Gamal" <mahergamal at gmail dot com>]

Salamo 3aelikom,

Recently I was discussing with one of my friends the translation state of IT articles and books and why there are some pitfalls in teaching this field in Arabic. The main point was that translation is always done on a word-by-word level , which lead to having the same translation used in various contexts even though the translation doesn't express the exact meaning (if at all). We first thought of solving this problem on our own but decided to make some research first and see what others put into this issue.

Most of the efforts done were gearing towards having a plain dictionary (i.e. word <==> word). Looking into the doc mailing list, this issue still keeps coming up as people try to struggle to find a one-fits-all word for the translation. In the end, it will come back to the translator to decide the context he / she is translating in and choose the correct word, but at least, defining these contexts and agreeing on the translations will somehow standardize how you read Arabic IT texts.

I was hoping if this could be attempted in the current Arabeyes wiki. I could try to give a hand.

I'm very open to any opinions , suggestions.

Thankyou,
Maher