“There are some Arabic letters that have no equivalent in English. Translation gets even more complicated when you look at the Arabic alphabet, which has 28 letters (as opposed to English, which has 26). Only a few other languages require such a change in formatting, like Hebrew (which is also left-to-right) or languages that can be written vertically, like Korean, Chinese, or Vietnamese. But popularity doesn’t mean simplicity - for example, since Arabic uses right-to-left formatting and English uses left-to-right, translating online content can be challenging. Arabic letters with no equivalents for English translationĪrabic is the fifth most popular spoken language today, with 313 million speakers. She said, ‘I asked myself a question: Is my job as a translator to communicate what Woolf says or how she says it?’ Naaot said she chose the second option… the harder choice.” - Ebtesam M. Arabic writer and translator Fatma Naaot expressed the dilemma in her introduction to a book of Virginia Woolf’s stories that she translated. “The everlasting challenge is to interpret both the original meaning and style. So we talked to one of our expert Arabic translators to better understand how they navigate the balance between cultural differences, tone, and grammatical changes between the two languages. One of the most significant challenges with translation is preserving both the meaning and the style and tone.

English: 4 common challenges and cultural differences to keep in mind While it’s not a Latin-based language like French or Spanish, you’ll find Arabic’s influence across many other languages in the region, like in Turkish, Persian, Kazakh, Kurdish, Urdu, and Malay.īetween grammar differences, cultural preferences, and style and tone for modern translations, there’s plenty to learn about translating content between English and Arabic. One of the oldest languages in the world, Arabic is an official language of more than 25 countries, from Qatar to Saudi Arabia to Algeria, and it’s one of six lingua franca languages for the United Nations. Across the Middle East and Africa, you’ll hear more than 30 varieties of Arabic.

English to muslim google translate