Arabic-L:PEDA:Business Correspondence responses

Tue Feb 1 18:14:50 UTC 2005

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
-
Arabic-L: Tue 01 Feb  2005
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
[To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu]
[To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to
listserv at byu.edu with first line reading:
            unsubscribe arabic-l                                      ]

-------------------------Directory------------------------------------

1) Subject:Business Correspondence response
2) Subject:Business Correspondence response
3) Subject:Business Correspondence response

-------------------------Messages-----------------------------------
1)
Date: 01 Feb  2005
From:Mutarjm at aol.com
Subject:Business Correspondence response

Greetings.

Re your query on the Arabic-L List

You might buy some of the bilingual books about composing formal /  
office correspondence. You can find those guidebooks (although some  
vary in their quality and into-English accuracy) at better-stocked  
Arabic bookstores near you.

If you are in the NoVA/DCarea, one good store to check is Al-Hikma  
(might be listed in the VA tel directory as al-Hikmat Bookstore), on  
Highway 7, as I recall.

If you are located elsewhere and away from such Arabic outlets, I can  
check the bountifully-stocked bookstores here in southern California  
and then advise you about titles and prices, etc.

You might visit "Dar al-Kitab al-Arabi" at URL < www.alkitab.com > and  
search their holdings.

If you get that position there at NED, the following are some operating  
tips and "lessons learned" from numerous translations I have done on  
behalf of the US Institute of Peace (USIP) and other NGOs / PVOs  
involved with Iraq or Arabophone parts of Africa:

1.  For correspondence that relates to most-recurring  
situations, prepare a register / stock / file of retrievable "format  
correspondence" -- i.e., standard discussions and responses of text  
with spaces into which you can insert basic relevant / new data. Do  
that soon and expand the contents as you go along.

2.   Grants are a somewhat-specialized field, so it may be helpful for  
you to review and become very, very familiar with the wording,  
concepts, expressions, and treatments in the English correspondence and  
associated references about grants and awards, etc.

o   Then, ask your Arab colleagues there to help you with preparing  
accurate Arabic equivalents and include those in your register / stock  
/ file.

o   Another option is that I can provide that into-Arabic production  
for your office at a reasonable rate.

Formats would include Arabic MS Word, RTF, PDF or Arabic MS Word in Mac  
environment.

o  I can also provide your NED office with matching language and  
culturization services into:

 *   Kurdish (four major dialects and both alphabets)
 *  Aramaic (if NED might deal with applicants in the Assyrian and  
Chaldean Christians of Iraq)
 *  Turkmen (ditto)
 *  Farsi

3.  If your NED office has PCs with MS Windows 2000 or XP (XP is much  
the better of the two OS), you can create, edit and work with  
correspondence written / word-processed in those RTL cursive languages.

(NOTE: for RTL cursive Kurdish, you need to support, install and use  
FARSI support included inside the basic CD for MS Windows, *** not ***  
Arabic support, as Arabic feature does not support, and therefore  
garbles/mangles, some distinctive Kurdish characters that are shared  
and supported in the Farsi environment.)

==  Your offices does ***not*** need to purchase any customized or  
exotic bidirectional multilingual software. You'd be fine and capable  
with MS Windows 2000 / XP and MS Office 2000 or later (add MS Publisher  
2K / XP / 2003, just in case)

5.   For production of Arabic-text items in PDF, your office might also  
add Adobe Acrobat 6.0 or 7.0 Standard; the "professional" version is  
bloated with bells-and-whistles and somewhat beyond the needs and  
budget of an ordinary office.

---  PDF is often a more-useful format with overseas recipients that do  
not have current or compatible versions of MS Windows and MS Office.

Helpful to include in your PDF note a "tear-off section" or separate  
page ("please reply here in the spaces below)" which the recipient can  
enter your requested reply and then fax back.

6.   After you create a piece of bilingual correspondence, you  
might assign a language article / prefix / suffix (EN and AD), either  
at the beginning or end of the subject name (MS Word).

Sample:    Grant Applicant Basic Information_EN

and
                  Grant Applicant Basic Information_AD_(Date/Name)

__or__

Sample:    EN_Grant Applicant Basic Information_(Date/Name)

and
                  AD_Grant Applicant Basic Information_(Date/Name)

Including that language-annotation feature will simplify  
your cross-referencing and retrieval of your files (plus some of peace  
of mind).

Hope all this helps. Good luck on your consideration for that position  
at the NED.

Khair, in sha' Allah. 
Regards,
Stephen H. Franke
San Pedro, California
Tel: 310-832-1037

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
--
2)
Date: 01 Feb  2005
From:ibc at ibcbooks.com
Subject:Business Correspondence response

Advanced business Arabic is also available from International Book  
Centre - Available on our website at:
www.ibcbooks.com

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
--
3)
Date: 01 Feb  2005
From:Jamal Qureshi <ArabLDS at hotmail.com>
Subject:Business Correspondence response

I was just sorting through my old books (3 months after a move, typical  
of my procrastination!), and found an old book that's been useful to me  
over the years entitled "al-xiTaabaat al-widdiyya  
wat-tigaariyya"/"Friendly & Business Letters" by Aly S. El Gawhary.  I  
picked it up in Cairo in the late 90s, the publisher is "maktabat ibn  
sina".  It's bilingual with lots of examples, though it was written  
before email was widespread.  The English is a bit poor, but that's not  
such a problem as it's giving forms of Arabic letters rendering the  
English rather unnecessary other than for someone whose Arabic needs a  
little assistance to make sure they're finding the right thing.   
Nothing spectacular, but for sheer practicality I've certainly  
appreciated it over the years and would recommend it if you can still  
track down a copy.  Best of luck,

Jamal

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
--
End of Arabic-L:  01 Feb  2005