Arabic Translation – Is It Difficult?
Why Arabic translation is difficult.
Without any disagreement Arabic is one of the most difficult languages in the world. So is the translation in this language. The main reason behind the difficulty is that Arabic language doesn’t absorb the developments and refinements which are vital for dealing with the modern business and technology. You can easily term it as technologically under developed language. Apart from technological lacking Arabic is also culturally backwards as technology has failed to make its impact on many parts of Arabic culture.
This is the reason while localizing from a technologically rich language like English becomes very difficult to cope with as it becomes really hard to deal with the barriers between technologically rich and non rich languages. A very good example in business terminology is that there is no difference in Arabic language between the words «management» and «administration». Both are called «Idara» in Arabic. If you are using this word for both terms you are simply calling upon ridiculous ambiguities because the words «administration» and «management» are used in two different senses. Similarly there is only one word «Hisaab» in Arabic for the words «compute» and «calculate» in English. The real problem is that when you use these terms you completely lose the meaning you are trying to convey in Arabic language.
A few more problems apart from the above also hover around the Arabic language. One significant problem is the lack of research in Arabic language for the development of computer resources which are required in a modern IT environment. There isn’t any source that can check Arabic Grammar, no source for OCR (Optical Character Reader) and no search engines. The crux is that there are no standards. Translation into Arabic is a hap hazard process with no clear standards and ways to follow. Translators just follow their instincts that what seems right and what doesn’t sound good and many times they are completely unable to convey the message which is intended to be conveyed and for the same reason a bulk of Arabic organizations use English language in their brochures, pamphlets, websites and other advertising and awareness material because they are not able to express themselves in Arabic.
That’s why you must hire any professional translation agency for your Arabic translation needs.