Translator: Hamzeh Koumakli Reviewer: Aya AA
ALRAFEE (an Arabic author) says:
"The degradation of nations is in the degradation of their tongue,
and the downfall of their language will always become their own.
That's when the foreigner colonizer imposes his tongue
on the colonized nation,
shows off his majesty
and chases them with it.
He then sentences three judges with one action:
The first one is:
imprisoning their language into his, indicted to a lifetime behind bars.
The second: convicting their past to be killed by oblivion.
And the third: chaining their future to the cuffs he makes,
and his authority to be the leash by which they’re bound."
(Applause)
The story started 8 years ago,
I was at my third year in college,
and I was asked to make a research about a certain disease.
I asked for help from my elder friend in the university.
He gave me books and articles and told me:
"If you want further information go and search on the Internet,
but I don't recommend you search in Arabic because you won’t find anything,
search only in English."
Why only in English?!
couldn't I find anything in Arabic?!
it's an old disease, and it must have some articles in Arabic
just as in English!
I came back home and started searching
I truly didn't find anything more than a few Arabic scripts in forums.
so I had to search in English, translate and then present the essay I wrote.
next day, I kept thinking about that
maybe this particular disease doesn't have much information about it in Arabic
thus I should search all over again
I searched with Google
and found that the first results you get when you do a scientific research
is Wikipedia
when I entered it, I felt like I've found what I was looking for
Wikipedia is a website that contains 295 languages
the main page has 10 principal languages including Arabic
which means they acknowledge Arabic as a powerful and universal language
I looked at the written details under each language,
and found that there are about 500,000 articles written in Arabic
In English, there is 5437962 articles.
- Don't check the number on the screen as I can't memorize it -
(Applause)
I told myself:"It's not about the quantity
the quality is much important"
when you check any of these articles,
you'll find that there are articles in English equal nearly to 40 pages
while they don't exceed 3 to 4 lines in Arabic.
It’s okay
why wouldn't I start to do something about it?
So I really took the calculator
to calculate the time I need to translate them
because I love typing on the computer to compensate for my illegible font
and I love Arabic and have a good knowledge of English
so I started using my calculator,
I found that if I want to translate all these articles
then I wouldn't need more than 900 years.
900 years!
regardless of which grandchildren level I would have by then,
those 5 million wouldn't stay the same, they may become 200 million
and eventually, we'll have 5 million articles in Arabic
So I asked myself: "Why bother myself?"
I don't even understand economics, engineering, maths, etc.!
I would work on what's related to my specialty
I would translate what involves medicine and pharmacy.
So I recalculated and found out that I need about 80 years.
80 years in front of a computer all day with the possibility of having backache
or having to wear glasses like I do now
I tried to rethink about it, why's that?
why isn't there any consideration given to Arabic?
Why do we believe that English is the essential language for all sciences?
when I went back in time a little bit,
I found that in the Abbasid Era,
translation process was so active
During that time, Arabs translated every book that got to their hands
articles, researches, myths, novels... etc
regardless of the content whether it's right or wrong,
they translated them anyway.
They translated them so they can discuss them, build on them
or criticize them.
This might be a part of our problem.
Today, any undergraduate student who wants to do some research
then he needs to look for information resources.
Unfortunately, they are available only in English
thus he needs to learn another language
and it takes a lot of time
regardless of that, the human being can't understand
what's written in a foreign language as his native language.
Even if anyone works in this field
eventually, articles and researches
are published originally in English and are maintained in that language
and we can't find them in Arabic.
Honestly, we need to work on turning this international scientific content
from English to other languages
just like Germans turning it into German, Japanese turning it to their language,
and like -
Can anyone read what's written on the screen?
Alright.
Does anyone understand this language?
Did it run across anyone of you?
This is called the "Cebuano".
It’s a language spoken by a group of about 20 million people
who live in the far east in Philippines.
Still, on Wikipedia there are, in this language,
4 million articles, and it's the second language in publishing after English.
So is it possible that we don't have the qualifications and ability
to support publishing Arabic content?!
I told myself: "I have to start within myself
and do something to support this idea".
Why don't we launch a scheme?
And I started contacting my friends in college and Facebook groups
and we started to work on translating.
When we started, we actually faced a fundamental challenge -
in a group of Syrians, Egyptians and Moroccans
there was a disagreement about translating some terms.
What should we translate "bacteria"?
should we keep it "bacteria" or translate it to "germs"?
Or to "living organisms"?
And what should we translate for example "metabolism"?
There are two synonyms in Arabic.
Is it possible that Arabic language couldn't help us create new terms?
When the English needed new terms,
their language did not help them.
So they came up with two things:
Firstly, they used Latin
because derivation is easier in Latin than English.
Secondly, they relied on abbreviations
to create new soft words.
What do you feel if I told you there is a disease spreading around the world
infecting 35 million people
and causing death to about 2 million every year.
And that I liked to name this disease "helps disease"?
Or to name the causing virus "FNMB"?
As an example,
it may seem a little weird.
Maybe some of us laughed.
I don’t know whether English people are laughing now or not,
but until today they use the word "AIDS"
which is the acronym for "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome"
and "AIDS" in English means "material assistance".
They didn't find any problem using that word
in another field than it supposed to be to refer to something else
while we find that shaky
and we don't like it,
maybe we should strongly believe
that the qualifications our language has
make it one of the most powerful languages in the world.
So we actually need a certified reference -
By the way, in France "AIDS" is called "SIDA"
because words' order changes there.
We need a certified reference
so translators or researchers can refer to when using terms in Arabic.
In fact, a book was made called the Unified Medical Dictionary
and I don’t know if there are any other similar thesauruses in other fields,
like economics and other fields
but they didn't spread that much,
Maybe because we don't believe that we can use these Arabic words.
We need support to publish these information and researches
whether they're new researches or translated from other languages.
And we shouldn't underestimate the need to have this content in Arabic
because it will save time and effort for many researchers.
We need efforts which may be provided by associations or organizations
but it has to start from ourselves initially
because ...
efforts we make will do a lot to reduce that gap.
Eventually, I'd like to remind you
that if anyone wants to translate these articles all by himself
then he will need - as long as he's on his own - at least 80 years
and he lost 15 minutes while attending this talk.
(Applause)