Arabic-L:LING:more on 'compromise'

Thu Aug 23 20:08:54 UTC 2007

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Arabic-L: Thu 23 Aug 2007
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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-------------------------Directory------------------------------------

1) Subject:compromise
2) Subject:compromise
3) Subject:compromise
4) Subject:compromise
5) Subject:compromise (follow-up post)
6) Subject:compromise (dil's rant)

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1)
Date: 23 Aug 2007
From:"Mahmoud Elsayess" <melsayess at socal.rr.com>
Subject:compromise

I agree with Professor Colangelo's interpretation for compromise.

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2)
Date: 23 Aug 2007
From:Rafik Berjak <rberjak at shaw.ca>
Subject:compromise

Hello all, I am personally inclined to use ??????musawamah for  
compromise.

Rafik Berjak

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3)
Date: 23 Aug 2007
From: "Tressy Arts" <tressy.arts at gmail.com>
Subject:compromise

Would not "taswiya" cover it? Or is that more an "arrangement"?  
"h.all wasat.in"?
Source the Dutch-Arabich Hoogland dictionary.

Sincerely,
Tressy Arts

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4)
Date: 23 Aug 2007
From: "J" <jmurg at ttlc.net>
Subject:compromise

Dear Colleagues:
I'd like to point out that "half-way solution" is *not* the best  
translation
of Hall wasaT.  "Half-way" in English, to me, implies "incomplete,"  
which is
not what I understand the meaning of the Arabic to be.      wasaT is the
*middle*, as in khayr al-'umuur wasaTuhaa.  It's the half-way point, not
*half of* a solution. To my mind this *does* express the English idea  
of an
agreement that gives each side something it wants but also denies  
something
each side wants, so that it falls mid-way between each side's wishes.

As previous messages have point out, this discussion is illuminating the
misconceptions and fuzzy thinking that a lot of people have about  
languages
and translation, including the simplistic idea that translation involves
mere replacement of words, and that somehow a phrase isn't as valid as a
single word. It's well known and accepted by proficient translators that
between the words of two languages there are one-to-one  
correspondences, one
to many, one to zero, and many to one, in both directions.  Sometimes a
concept really is very foreign and requires a relatively long phrase  
or even
a sentence or paragraph  (or footnotes) to convey, but good, thoughtful
translators who are willing to pause and think for a while usually  
find an
adequate way of conveying the meaning of the original.

What about the price that has been agreed upon after bargaining or
negotiating?  It's certainly not a concept foreign to the Middle  
East, is
it? And it certainly *is*a compromise.
Best regards,
  -- Jackie Murgida
Arabic>English translator
Certified, American Translators Association

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5)
Date: 23 Aug 2007
From:BearMeiser at aol.com
Subject:compromise

Thanks for all the answers regarding "compromise." It appears that  
the most
common translation for the NOUN "compromise" is Hall wasaT.

However, there is also the other meaning of the verb "to  
compromise," (and
its associated noun) which is different than Hall wasaT. This  
compromise means
"to give up something in order to get something else that you want."  
It has a
somewhat negative connotation from the point of view of the doer.  
Thus, it
would be this meaning found in expressions such as "Never  
compromise!" or
"Politics is the art of compromise" etc. Here, Hall wasaT would not  
do, since Hall
wasaT would be "an agreement in which both parties give up something  
in order to
reach a solution."

So I suppose the closest thing to this meaning of compromise would  
probably
be "tanaazul"?

A second point: Hall wasaT sounds to me like it is one of the modern
newspaper/media/UN type of terms, and I imagine it came about as a  
translation for
"compromise" (though I could be wrong). However, the article I  
mentioned says
that historically Arabic has had no word for compromise, and this  
fact has
explanatory power in Middle Eastern history.
Is there a word for compromise used before Arabic became a  
translation of
newspaper English?

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6)
Date: 23 Aug 2007
From:Dil Parkinson <dil at byu.edu>
Subject:compromise

I'm going to take advantage of my position of moderator and respond  
to the new question (#5 above) before anyone else gets a chance.  A  
couple of points need to be made:
1) It is unusual  for supposedly equivalent words or expressions in  
different languages to exactly match in all their meanings and  
usages.  It is to be expected (and hardly noteworthy) that this would  
be the case for the various meanings of 'compromise'.  Besides the  
additional meaning given in #5, there is also the meaning of  
'exposing something to danger or censure', as in 'he compromised his  
position with that move', or 'he compromised his morals'.  Again,  
there would not be any necessary expectation that the translation of  
one meaning would be related to that of the others.
2) Although it probably is true that Hall wasaT is a modern coinage,  
and that there was no word or phrase previous to that which had the  
precise meaning "both sides giving something up to reach a solution",  
the notion that this fact has some kind of historical explanatory  
power is reflective of extremely shallow thinking and an almost weird  
kind of linguistic determinism.  A look at the OED indicates that the  
original meaning of the word compromise was simply 'arbitration', and  
thus 'settling (a conflict, disagreement)".  It developed the more  
specialized meaning later, apparently at least partly as a result of  
the rise of democratic institutions and parliamentary bodies where  
the specialized meaning is useful and salient (cf. the Missouri  
Compromise (the name of an act of Congress)).  Would we want to say  
that the English of Chaucer's day, who apparently didn't have this  
more specialized meaning, were less likely to compromise than later  
English?  Probably not.  We would just want to say that developments  
in their culture made the new meaning salient and important, and thus  
made it easy for the word for settling a disagreement to develop this  
specialized meaning.  We would then say the same thing about Arabic  
and Arab culture.  Before modern times Arab culture had many  
traditional ways to settle disputes and disagreements, and there are  
many words for such things, and many of them involve what we now call  
compromise (think of tribal elders visiting another tribe to express  
sorrow for what one of their young bucks has done, and offering  
payments and other incentives to bring the matter to a close).   
However, the specialized notion of compromise was not that salient  
until Arabs started adopting parliamentary democratic institutions,  
and other aparatus of the modern nation state.  As soon as they  
needed the concept, they developed a word for it.  That is pretty  
much exactly what happened in English.  And it is what happened with  
an extremely large number of other new coinages in Arabic developed  
to cover concepts which were not salient in their pre-modern culture,  
but which have become salient now.
I suppose one could make a case for trying to examine pre-Modern Arab  
culture and try to find the roots of the Arab personality or 'the  
Arab mind', and then use that to try to explain supposed  
characteristics of modern Arabs.  I have so far seen no successful  
realizations of this, and have seen many total failures, but at least  
it is conceivable.  But one would have to do a wholistic examination  
of the whole culture for this to be taken seriously at all.  To  
simply note the lack of a particular word meaning without noting  
other related words that ARE there, and their possible and actual  
uses, all in total ignorance of the actual structures and mechanisms  
that made pre-Modern Arab society work, and then trying to hang some  
kind of general understanding of Arabs on that tiny fact is simply  
stupid.  Isolated words simply cannot be made to carry that large of  
a burden.
Sorry for the rant.  (Other posts welcome)
dil

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