If you google “Arabic translation” so many online translation websites would be listed, offering Arabic to English, English to Arabic, etc. translations.

The best of these machines do the translation based on some formulas, while most of them do a word for word translation that results in a vague text.

Now imagine the time when a person does the translation. He/she would choose definition of words wisely, in a way that the meaning matches rest of the sentence and the final text has a clear meaning, it is understandable, and transfers some meaningful data to the readers.

If the translator be a professional one, the translation would be of coherent and cohesion. A professional translator even may does some researches to understand the original text, then translate it in a way that be completely clear and understandable to the audience.

Difficulties in Arabic translation

Arabic is of two different kinds: classical Arabic, which is the language used in Quran and in formal writings, and the other one is modern Arabic, which is used in modern texts and in speaking. So in order to translate a text into Arabic you need to know who the audience is.

In addition, it is assigned gender to each Arabic word. For example the sun, the earth, tables, and all the things and even verbs have a gender. It makes the translator to be careful in using verbs and pronouns.

Furthermore, modern Arabic has a wide range of dialects. It adds another difficulty in translating Arabic.

Differences between English and Arabic

When you are writing Arabic, you starts from the right side of a line and ends in the left.

Besides Arabic alphabet is completely different from Latin alphabet.

As it was said, verbs and things are assigned gender which in English language does not matter.

Despite all these differences, some English words rooted in Arabic, e.g. “guitar” which is “qithara” in Arabic.

Conclusion

As Google suggests, Arabic is the second most difficult language to translate, after Mandarin.

So translating texts specially academic texts and papers is very important and needs a precision, experienced translator who is interested in his/her work and does researches in case in is necessary so that the final translation be an accurate, clear, and easy to understand text.

One of the Hoortash’s services is translation services. Our translators offer professional and specialized translations in Arabic, English, and Russian.