Arabic-L:LING:Standardization of Arabic Technical Terms

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Thu 09 Jul 2009
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1) Subject:Standardization of Arabic Technical Terms

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1)
Date: 09 Jul 2009
From:Benjamin Geer <benjamin.geer at gmail.com>
Subject:Standardization of Arabic Technical Terms

  found the following article stimulating, and would be interested to
hear the views of the readers of this list on the problems it
outlines:

David Wilmsen and Riham Osama Youssef, "Regional standards and local
routes in adoption techniques for specialised terminologies in the
dialects of written Arabic," The Journal of Specialised Translation 11
(January 2009), 191-210.

http://www.jostrans.org/issue11/art_wilmsen.pdf

Abstract:

"As opposed to its numerous, somewhat mutually unintelligible regional
spoken vernaculars, formal written Arabic is generally regarded by its
users as constituting a single standard across the entire Arab world.
Regardless of this perception, translators and interpreters are aware
that written Arabic also demonstrates regional variations. This poses
potential obstacles to those working in a transnational environment,
in that regional technical terminologies are for their part also
somewhat mutually unintelligible.

"To assess the terminological variations in formal written Arabic, an
examination was made of technical terms compiled from original works
by Arab authors and western books translated into Arabic. Seventeen in
all, these were the product of twelve Arab authors and translators
writing or translating works in the fields of sociology and
psychology. These fields were chosen precisely because they are among
the fields outside of the Arab intellectual tradition, only being
introduced to it relatively recently, being thus likely to employ
novel terminologies. Terms extracted from these works were checked
against 16 general and specialist dictionaries and three United
Nations glossaries. Terminological discrepancies and inconsistencies
were noticed in all of these works. Corroborating evidence is brought
by observations of technical terms and regional variants in commercial
jargon, journalistic usage, and municipal categories from Arab world."

Ben

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