Arabic-L:TRANS:intifada translate or transliterate?

[Dilworth B. Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Thu 25 Oct 2001
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1) Subject: intifada translate or transliterate?

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1)
Date:  25 Oct 2001
From: Waleed Al-Amri <waleed at talk21.com>
Subject: intifada translate or transliterate?

Since the notion of foriegnization has been brought to the attention of the
respected members of the list, what about Intifada?

Why has the Arabic name for the Palestinian uprising been transliterated in
English?

I am well aware that there is not a perfect match to it in English but I
believe that any of the many English synonyms of uprising could have done
the job just as perfectly. Anyway linguists since the linguistic relativity
of Sapir and Whorf, although to a much lesser degree believed that a perfect
match between concepts in languages is well and truly a chimera (a mythical
creature) for the simple reason that languages are used to fulfil social
functions which could be different among different cultural realities. Just
think about the obvious Arabic translation of "spy", i.e. "Jasoos" and the
connotative differences between the two: the former is romanticised in the
English speaking cultures (thanks to Ian Fleming and 007), and the latter is
over laden with negative overtones. So if we want to justify such
transliterations as Intifada on the grounds of incongruity of meaning, we
might as well transliterate the whole Arabic language into English.

I am also aware that this is not an isolated case in English as there is the
very famous glasnost and perestroika.


One explanation could be that such a social semiotic adoption of an element
that does not exist in the repertoire is to avoid the connotative meanings
associated with the indigenous elements that could have done the job whether
these connotations are positive or negative. 'Uprising' is over laden with
meaning: it is not just the dictionary meaning but how people tend to use
this word (or the idea of semantic prosody in corpus linguistics). Is it
then a matter of borrowing an element form another language, i.e. importing
the frame (or container)  and filling it up with the meanings that we deem
appropriate?!

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End of Arabic-L:  25 Oct 2001