خواطر حول الترجمة -3

This post is for advanced translators.

Here are some thoughts that I would like to share with you..

A strange meaning for a familiar word

During my research for the last post, I spent quite some time looking up the dictionaries for the word “familiarity”. The reason for this was a rather shocking meaning for the word I stumbled upon in Al-Mawrid. I have the electronic version of this all-famous dictionary, and the meaning that shocked me was the third meaning of the word. It was “حرية جنسية” (so it was written, and as they say in Arabic لا حياء في العلم). I never thought the word that I use so often had such an unfamiliar meaning. I couldn’t think of a single use for this meaning of the word, so I hurried to my favorite English online dictionary www.thefreedictionary.com, and the closest meaning I found was “a sexual advance”. Not wanting to trust one source for such a serious issue, so I looked the same word up in my second favoirte online dictionary www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary. I also found something close: “a sexual liberty”. This must be the meaning the authors of Al-Mawrid translated into “حرية جنسية”. But have you noticed that both meanings in the two English online dictionaries had the indefinite article “a” before them? This surely denotes that “liberty”, in this context, is not a non-countable noun.

What do you think? Were Al-Mawrid’s authors wise in translating the word like they did? Could you think of a better alternative?

One more site to share

Just when I was about to finalize the last point, I thought I should search for a use of the word familiarity as “a sexual advance” or “a sexual liberty”. I used my highly refined Google skills and made a super search.. and I was in for a surprise. I didn’t find any such use for the word, but I found a super site: http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/. This must be the most comprehensive “free” online dictionary. Have a look and see how it explains the word in every context possible. I haven’t yet tested the site, but thought I should pass it to you nonetheless.

English expressions that have no equivalent

What would you do when you face an English expression that has no equivalent in Arabic? Some English expressions were ported as is into Arabic and live happily there, others weren’t. Look at the following sentence. Pay special attention to the bold expression:

Once we perceive a dissimilarity, it’s all downhill from there. Even traits we might have liked, or been neutral about before, now get the thumbs down.

Here is my translation for it:

وبمجرد أن ندرك اختلافاتنا، يبدأ الشقاق في التسارع كما لو أنه صخرة تنحدر من علٍ. فحتى السمات التي ربما نكون قد أحببناها، أو كنا نحس بشعور محايد تجاهها، تبدأ الآن في إثارة امتعاضنا.

The word “الشقاق” is induced from the context. I wouldn’t say that I “translated” the expression, I just found a somewhat acceptable equivalent that could convey part of the meaning. Can you think of a better translation?

Of course, you could just port the expression into Arabic and say “نقلب لها إبهامنا” or something similar, but do you really think Arabic readers would recognize the meaning?

Adjectives of size, height and the likes

In English, you can use size, weight, or height as an adjective for a noun. For example, you could say: “He was a skinny 60kg man”. This can be easily translated into Arabic:

“كان رجلاً نحيلاً وزنه 60 كيلوجراماً”.

Notice how I added the word “وزنه”. Now look at the following sentence:

For larger files, such as images, you can store about 650 1MB files on the disc.

بالنسبة للملفات الأكبر حجماً، مثل الصور، يمكنك تخزين حوالي 650 ملفاً بحجم 1 ميجابايت على القرص

Notice how I had to introduce the word بحجم.

How often and how full

Have a look at the following sentence:

You can restore a deleted file because Windows 7 moves each deleted file from its original folder to a special folder called the Recycle Bin, where the file stays for a few days or a few weeks, depending on how often you empty the Recycle Bin or how full the folder becomes.

I really hate “how often” because I don’t have a translation that I like for it, and now I have to deal with “how full” as well..

يمكنك استعادة الملفات المحذوفة لأن ويندوز 7 ينقل كل ملف تحذفه من مجلده الأصلي إلى مجلد خاص يُسمى سلة المحذوفات، حيث يبقى الملف لعدة أيام أو عدة أسابيع، بحسب مدى تكرار إفراغك لسلة المحذوفات، أو مدى امتلاء المجلد.

If I was asked to translate “how often” into colloquial Arabic, I would suggest “كل أد إيه” but I cannot think of a better classical Arabic translation than “مدى تكرار”. Can you?

Two different English words that have the same meaning in Arabic

This happens a lot more often than you think. You could have two or more different words in English that have the same meaning in Arabic.

.. different types of files, such as photos, images, pictures, drawings, illustrations..

How would you translate “images” and “pictures” in the same sentence?

Look up the two words in the dictionary and see how overlapping in meaning they really are. Also, note that each one is listed in the synonyms of the other.

Normally, I would translate each one of them as “صورة”, but what would you do if they appeared in the same sentence?

To add insult to injury, you also have the word “photo” in the same sentence which translates into “صورة فوتوغرافية”.. so now you have two “صورة” and one “صورة فوتوغرافية”.. and still you hear some people say translation is fun (I am one of them, by the way 🙂 ).

If I face this situation, I will drop one of them, quite reluctantly and for the lack of a better alternative. But I can do it because I can get away with it, don’t just follow me blindly 🙂

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