Tuesday, April 02, 2002
The Perils of Translation Continue
Today's Slate.com includes a short item,"Arabic":
"If the Arabic language is what unifies the Arab world, can all Arabs understand each other? Not exactly: There is an official language used in the media and diplomacy, and colloquial Arabic is spoken on the streets and in the markets. . . . today Mohammed and his companions could walk into a Cairo mosque, or an Arab League Summit, and they'd be understood.
"Still, a 25-year-old Algerian would have a hard time asking for directions to that same Cairo mosque. That's because every Arab nation has its own spoken dialect or ameya."
Keep in mind that, thanks to Executive Order 13166, should that same 25-year-old Algerian walk into an American hospital and be given a translation into Egyptian Arabic instead of Algerian Arabic, he would have grounds to file a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights of the Department of Health and Human Services. Should that hospital not mend its ways to the satisfaction of the government, the hospital could lose all its federal funding and thus forced to close its doors.
|posted by Jim on 11:03 PM|
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