Arabic-L:TRAN:firewall

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Thu 30 Jan 2003
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject:firewall thanks
2) Subject:firewall

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1)
Date:  30 Jan 2003
From: <Sattar.Izwaini at student.umist.ac.uk>
Subject:firewall thanks

Thanks for all those who discussed the term "firewall". Your input
is appreciated.
My initial query was about its original counterpart in Arabic civil
engineering terminology not its possible translations within the
world of computing and Internt.

Sattar

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2)
Date:  30 Jan 2003
From: dwilmsen <dwilmsen at aucegypt.edu>
Subject:firewall

The term used in Egypt, in building (which was the original query), not
in
computing, is
Haa'iT naar or niiraan, obviously a calque.

These discussions about technical terminology in Arabic are interesting
in
that they
illustrate nicely how non-standard technical terminology is across the
Arab
world, since
we ourselves cannot come to agreement about terms.  This is a feature of
Arabic that
translators know well.

I just recently conducted a comparison between the UN Manual for Arabic
Translators and
the IMF Glossary (in French, English, and Arabic), in which I found
that in
economic
terminology alone (the UN Manual covers many more fields than does the
IMF
glossary),
there is complete or partial disagreement of terms roughly 25% of the
time.
Partial
disagreement would be a situation in which the individual elements of a
compound term
do not agree exactly.  This accounted for only about 5% of the terms,
leaving
a full 20% in
complete disagreement.  There was complete agreement between terms in
about
the same
percentage (25%).   The majority of entries (about 45%) in both works
offered
a range of
terms, over which there was partial agreement amongst the possible
Arabic
terms.
These figures are rounded for the sake of the discussion here.

The IMF Glossary was recently complied (release date 2000) primarily by
Egyptian
translators and interpreters, while the UN Manual was originally
compiled much
earlier
(latest release is 1989) by Moroccan and Lebanese
translator/interpreters for
the most
part.

My guess is that for familiar subjects, terminology tends to reach
agreement
over time
(but consider the certainly familiar concept "computer", which might be
Haasuub, Haasib
aaly, rattaaba, even kombiyuutar....), and that newer concepts will
display
wide
disagreement.  The partial agreement between a range of terms probably
illustrates
regional variation of usage, wherewith a standard, pan-Arabic term has
not
been
adopted for a given concept.

David Wilmsen
Director, Arabic and Translation Studies
The American University in Cairo
28 Falaki Street
Bab El-Louk
Cairo, Egypt
tel:  2 02 7976872
fax:  2 02 7957565

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End of Arabic-L:  30 Jan 2003