Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Incongruous...

Being such an international city we do get some strange meldings of cultures.

This one struck me as incongruous - the traditional regional architectural style housing a chippie...





Not only incongruous but helpful by the way. If you have an urgent need to write 'fish & chips' in Arabic, it's like this:

at

6 comments:

  1. AnonymousOctober 28, 2008 2:48 pm

    I actually disapprove of this type of "Arabic translation". It's a complete waste and it doesn't communicate anything to a native Arabic speaker.

    The best example of this is road sign pointing to The One and Only Royal Mirage. Its a completely pointless transciption for an Arabic-only speaker.

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  2. SeabeeOctober 28, 2008 4:17 pm

    Jadaoun I'm sure you're right. But the rule is that signs must be in Arabic as well as English, and I agree with that. I guess the problem is trying to put things in Arabic for which there's no real Arabic phrase, such as fish'n'chips.

    Can you tell me, are they just phonetic translations of the sounds? So for example if you read these Arabic characters do they say "fish & chips"?

    I've always asked translators not to simply translate the actual words into Arabic, I've tried to explain what I was trying to say, the feeling I wanted to express, and then asked them to write that in Arabic so that an Arabic reader would get the same message.

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  3. samuraisamOctober 28, 2008 6:43 pm

    ...more like "feesh and sheebs"...

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  4. AbidOctober 29, 2008 3:00 am

    @Seebee

    Yes it is a phonetic transcription in Arabic.

    It reads "Feesh Sheeps"

    Even better is the name of the chain Chili's - "Tsheelees" (there is no "ch" in Arabic)

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  5. SeabeeOctober 29, 2008 11:13 am

    Shukran Abid.

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousOctober 29, 2008 12:53 pm

    Feesh and Sheeps and a large Bebsi, blease ;-)

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