Re: Context Translation

[Youssef Chahibi <chahibi at gmail dot com>]

On Thursday 28 June 2007 18:03:28 Maher Gamal wrote:
> Salamo 3aelikom,

وعليكم السلام
>
> 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.

This problem raises in many scientific and technical fields,  -so called - 
modern western knowledge. The direct and simple cause is that there are few 
complete Arabic scientific glossaries, often not easily available. This 
resulted in each translator translating with its own references, which are 
also not accurate enough ( The ALECSO Bureau of coordination of 
Arabization's "unified dictionary of computer science terms" doesn't make a 
difference between "encryption" and "encoding"  ). Certainly, if sciences 
were more developed in Arab universities and economies, the situation would 
be different, practice regulating theory.

> 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.

This is among the main reasons why the http://wiki.arabeyes.org/Technical 
Dictionary project started, although the project is still premature. You are 
welcome to use it to discuss terms translations.

> 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.

I guess an easy solution would be to create a disambiguation page whenever 
clarification depending on the context is needed, a translator can request it 
from the talk page (and create it if there is no opposition).

The "wiki" nature of the project makes it improve by practice, feel free to 
suggest improvements.

> Thankyou,
> Maher
> ______