Do you understand Arabic?

Apparently, there are misinterpretations in the translations from such televised or otherwise broadcasted programs.

MEMRI is in charge of media being translated from Arabic or Persian.

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Arabic under fire

Brian Whitaker

May 15, 2007 9:30 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/brian_whitaker/2007/05/arabic_under_fire.html
Memri, the "research institute" which specialises in translating portions of the Arabic media into English, has issued a video clip from a children's programme on Hamas TV in which it claims that a Palestinian girl talked of becoming a suicide bomber and annihilating the Jews.
Memri - described by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman as "invaluable" - supplies translations free of charge to journalists, politicians and others, particularly in the US.
Though Memri claims to be "independent" and maintains that it does not "advocate causes or take sides", it is run by Yigal Carmon, a former colonel in Israeli military intelligence. Carmon's partner in setting up Memri was Meyrav Wurmser who in 1996 was one of the authors of the now-infamous "Clean Break" document which proposed reshaping Israel's "strategic environment" in the Middle East, starting with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
In the Hamas video clip issued by Memri, a Mickey Mouse lookalike asks a young girl what she will do "for the sake of al-Aqsa". Apparently trying to prompt an answer, the mouse makes a rifle-firing gesture and says "I'll shoot".
The child says: "I'm going to draw a picture."
Memri's translation ignores this remark and instead quotes the child (wrongly) as saying: "I'll shoot."
Pressed further by the mouse - "What are we going to do?" - the girl replies in Arabic: "Bidna nqawim." The normal translation of this would be "We're going to [or want to] resist" but Memri's translation puts a more aggressive spin on it: "We want to fight."
The mouse continues: "What then?"
According to Memri, the child replies: "We will annihilate the Jews."
The sound quality on the clip is not very good, but I have listened to it several times (as have a number of native Arabic speakers) and we can hear no word that might correspond to "annihilate".
What the girl seems to say is: "Bitokhoona al-yahood" - "The Jews will shoot us" or "The Jews are shooting us."
This is followed by further prompting - "We are going to defend al-Aqsa with our souls and blood, or are we not?"
Again, the girl's reply is not very clear, but it's either: "I'll become a martyr" or "We'll become martyrs."
In the context of the conversation, and in line with normal Arab-Islamic usage, martyrdom could simply mean being killed by the Israelis' shooting. However, Memri's translation of the sentence - "I will commit martyrdom" turns it into a deliberate act on the girl's part, and Colonel Carmon has since claimed that it refers to suicide bombers.
The overall effect of this is to change a conversation about resistance and sacrifice into a picture of unprovoked and seemingly motiveless aggression on the part of the Palestinians. But why hype the content in this way? Hamas's use of children's TV for propaganda purposes is clearly despicable, as the BBC, the Guardian and others have noted, without any need to exaggerate its content.
Among those misled by Memri's "translation" was Glenn Beck of CNN, who had planned to run it on his radio programme, until his producer told him to stop. Beck informed listeners this was because CNN's Arabic department had found "massive problems" with it.
Instead of broadcasting the tape, Beck then invited Carmon on to the programme and gave him a platform to denounce CNN's Arabic department, and in particular to accuse one of its staff, Octavia Nasr, of being ignorant about the language.
Carmon related a phone conversation he had had with Ms Nasr:
She said the sentence where it says [in Memri's translation] "We are going to ... we will annihilate the Jews", she said: "Well, our translators hear something else. They hear 'The Jews are shooting at us'."

I said to her: "You know, Octavia, the order of the words as you put it is upside down. You can't even get the order of the words right. Even someone who doesn't know Arabic would listen to the tape and would hear the word 'Jews' is at the end, and also it means it is something to be done to the Jews, not by the Jews."

And she insisted, no the word is in the beginning. I said: "Octavia, you just don't get it. It is at the end" ... She didn't know one from two, I mean.
Carmon's words succeeded in bamboozling Glenn "Israel shares my values" Beck, who told him: "This is amazing to me ... I appreciate all of your efforts. I appreciate what you do at Memri, it is important work."
It was indeed amazing, because in defending Memri's translation, Carmon took issue not only with CNN's Arabic department but also with all the Arabic grammar books. The word order in a typical Arabic sentence is not the same as in English: the verb comes first and so a sentence in Arabic which literally says "Are shooting at us the Jews" means "The Jews are shooting at us".
I have written about Memri's tweaking of translations before. One example was its manipulation of Osama bin Laden's speech on the eve of the last American presidential election (details here, at the end of the article). Another was an Egyptian newspaper's interview with the mufti of Jerusalem. Memri's translators changed the question: "How do you deal with the Jews who are besieging al-Aqsa and are scattered around it?" to "How do you feel about the Jews?" They then heavily edited the mufti's words to give an anti-semitic-sounding reply to the new question.
The curious thing about all this is that Memri's translations are usually accurate (though it is highly selective in what it chooses to translate and often removes things from their original context). When errors do occur, it's difficult to attribute them to incompetence or accidental lapses. As in the case of the children's TV programme, there appears to be a political motive.
The effect of this is to devalue everything Memri translates - good and bad alike. Responsible news organisations can't rely on anything it says without going back and checking its translations against the original Arabic.

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Yeah they were really talking about playing games, sure...games...

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2006 CL500
2009 C300 4matic
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

Well I'll probably be long gone by that point.

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2006 CL500
2009 C300 4matic
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

Unless you are of old age or have a terminal illness you'll stand witness, trust me.

Care to answer my question?

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300TD W124, Two VW TDI Passat Wagons,Cummins Ram 250, Kubota Tractor
23 cylinders sipping the sweet sauce of the soy bean

Sure, firstly the price of oil is only going to raise to a point, which I suspect we are close to. At a certain price per barrel it starts becoming profitable for Russia and Canada to start pumping theirs. As the price of oil goes up so do our oil reserves. Its not that the oil isn't their, its that it just doesn't make sense to extract until a certain price point.


As for alternitive sources sure, its ECO 101. When the price of fuel rises to the point that another alternative makes sense we will use it. We are just now seeing people care about fuel mileage at $3 per gallon. As seen last year when gas passed $3 per gallon car sales beat SUV sales for the first time in many years. So the market has showed that above $3 per gallon people will start to change what they buy. The queston now is at what price will an alternative start to make sense? I'll wag $5.

Contrary to popular beleif the oil wells are not going to dry up one day all of a sudden and the world will collapese.

I'm not worried, I would be surprised if we are not running gas cars 100 years from now.

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2006 CL500
2009 C300 4matic
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

You don't know what's been said, unless you understand Arabic on an advanced level.
All you know is what's been translated to you. A translation designed to make the US population understand what they are 'supposed' to understand.

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BTW, I'm sorry to tell you, 'Der Spiegel' maintains one of the worst reputations when it comes to objectivity.
You might as well quote 'Bild am Sonntag'. Same publishing house, Axel Springer Verlag.

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Makes you wonder how the old "Mister Roger's Neighborhood" shows would translate into Arabic?

"It's a crappy day in my neighborhood, an awful day in my neighborhood. Won't you kill ... won't you kill ... won't you kill my neighbor?"

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M. G. Burg
'10 - Dakota SXT - Daily Ride / ≈ 172.5K
.'76 - 450SLC - 107.024.12 / < .89.20 K
..'77 - 280E - 123.033.12 / > 128.20 K
...'67 - El Camino - 283ci / > 207.00 K
....'75 - Yamaha - 650XS / < 21.00 K
.....'87 - G20 Sportvan / > 206.00 K
......'85 - 4WINNS 160 I.O. / 140hp
.......'74 - Honda CT70 / Real 125
.
“I didn’t really say everything I said.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ~ Yogi Berra ~

Burg, can you please rephrase that, so that I can understand it the way I'm supposed to understand it?

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Der Altgesell ist froh und lacht,
Weil ihm die erste Maß gebracht.

Der Stoff ist sehr zu loben,
Drum wird sofort der Krug gehoben.



Schlupp! rinnt das Bier durch seine Kehle
Auf einmal in die heiße Seele.



"Was ist denn das?" - denkt er erschreckt,
"Daß dieses so abscheulich schmeck?"

Da hat er es. O, Schreck und Graus!
Ha! welch abscheul'che, tote Maus!



Ja, ja! - Kaum will man sich erfreun,
So kommt gleich was Fatales drein!

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The Palestinian Prime minister disavowed what the Mickey Mouse character on Al-Aqsa TV said, plain and simple, it seems to me. The media simply reported that fact.

And HE understands Arabic pretty well, reads it and writes it as well as speaks it. He's pretty sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, too.

I just picked the German paper Der Speigel as the first one I saw on Google, that's all.

It's the same story on MSMBC:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18580878/ His disavowal was widely reported, I saw it on BBC World news also.

Understanding Arabic might be very helpful in parsing out the subtle nuances
of what is being said, it's true, but not always needed to get the basic message.

I don't think the Israelis need to understand Arabic to get the message when rockets are being lobbed at them from the Gaza strip.

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1991 560 SEC AMG, 199k <---- 300 hp 10:1 ECE euro HV ...

1995 E 420, 170k "The Red Plum" (sold)

2015 BMW 535i xdrive awd Stage 1 DINAN, 6k, <----364 hp

1967 Mercury Cougar, 49k

2013 Jaguar XF, 20k <----340 hp Supercharged, All Wheel Drive (sold)

I doubt that 11 or 12 year olds are the ones who are firing the rockets in the current situation, but maybe so.
I reckon it takes a few more steps to draw an anology on that behalf.

And no, Israelis are swift enough to return the fire, without delay.

I wonder, if the 'Breeding Hate' - effect has achieved even more in the US than over there by such broadcasts.

If the Palestinian Prime Minister has pulled it of the air, is somewhat irrelevant, after it was broadcast around the globe.

And, YES! The basic message was received very clear.
Think collectively. Get outraged over Palestinians' behaviour.

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Everyone is pumping full out now, and loosing capacity. Perhaps you might want to do a little research.

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300TD W124, Two VW TDI Passat Wagons,Cummins Ram 250, Kubota Tractor
23 cylinders sipping the sweet sauce of the soy bean

Brand new to this forum, have to say it is fun to read the threads.

So many opinions, and none of them entriely correct.

BTW, I will have a 82 300SD this summer - 132k miles version.