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Google Translate Enhancements

March 27, 2011 by Alan Earnshaw

I have returned to Google Translate after several months. I was learning colloquial Arabic, and because it is very different from fusha, I did not have much use for Google Translate.

However, I just bought an Arabic anthology – Arabic Literature, Culture and Thought from Pre-Islamic Times to the Present by Bassam K. Frangieh — which is written entirely in fusha. I wanted to translate a couple of pieces from the book: a speech by Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and a short story by Ghassan Kanafani. Using my usual method, I got out my Hans Wehr and Al-Mawrid dictionaries, and opened up Google Translate.

Since I last looked at the program back in December, Google has introduced a few new enhancements. First, there is an Arabic virtual keyboard built into the program. It’s not all that noticeable. If you look to the bottom right corner of the area where you enter Arabic text, there is a small keyboard icon. Click on the icon and the keyboard appears. I use an Arabic keyboard on my home machine, but this is helpful when using any PC in any location. As long as you can get to Google, you have a virtual keyboard at your disposal.

Another innovation is an editing function. It enables you to change Google’s translation choices on the fly. For example, try typing into Google Translate in Arabic, “This poetry is beautiful.” The English translation may appear as either “This poetry is beautiful” or “This hair is beautiful”. As I’ve written in a previous post, Google Translate is not perfect.

  

Arabic To English in Google TranslateWhichever translation appears, hair or poetry, place the cursor over that word and a dropdown menu appears with several alternative choices. In the example above, Google Translate offers alternative translations of the Arabic word for “hair,” including “poetry” and “the hair.” 

English To Arabic in Google TranslateThe editing function also works with English to Arabic translation. For this example, write in English, “This is a big town.” When you put the cursor over the Arabic word for town, several alternatives are offered. So if you are looking for Arabic synonyms, this is not a bad tool.

I am still playing with Google Translate, so I’ll have to see what other tricks are built into the program.

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New Arabic Degree at Portland State University

December 16, 2010 by Alan Earnshaw

Portland State University has upgraded Arabic from a minor subject to a full four-year degree. If you browse PSU’s website for information, you’ll still see quite a few references to an Arabic minor, as the website staff  haven’t fully updated the site yet for the new Arabic degree. It’s still not possible to run a DARS (Degree Audit Reporting System) report to see the exact requirements for the new Arabic degree.  However, these details should be smoothed out over the next few months.

The university has hired a new professor, Dr. Yasmeen Hanoosh. She taught her first classes during the just-completed fall quarter: an introductory grammar class, AR101, and an advanced class on the Arabic essay. During the winter quarter, she will teach an advanced class called Advanced Modern Standard Arabic: Short Story and Novel, and AR 102,  the next course in the grammar sequence.

With the Arabic degree now officially in place, Arabic department head Dr. Dirgham Sbait has launched a new series of Arabic conversation classes in what he calls Common Spoken Arabic. This new series integrates the various colloquial Arabic dialects. These classes begin with AR 204, 205 and 206 and advance to AR 304, 305 and 306.  The first class in the series, AR 204, requires at least one year of Modern Standard Arabic as a prerequisite.  Because the Arabic degree is so new, only the 200-level classes are available this year. Next year, the 300-level Common Spoken Arabic classes will be available, too. 

The Arabic department is now in the initial stages of its search for an additional Arabic professor. I’m not sure how fast these academic searches proceed, but I would guess that the new professor could begin teaching two years from now. The timing is perfect for anyone who’s  just starting the four-year Arabic degree. 

If there is any information you can’t find on the Portland State website, leave a comment on this post or email me, and I’ll see what I can discover.

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Arabic Fonts in Windows 7

June 9, 2010 by Alan Earnshaw

I used an Arabic keyboard with Microsoft Word 2007 on Windows XP for about two years. I finally retired the XP machine this week and got a new machine with Windows 7 Home Premium.  

Most of the setup for the new machine was easy. Windows 7 found my network connection and printer automatically. I installed Microsoft Office.  The transfer of document files took minutes. At the end of an hour, the setup was complete, and I was ready to enable Word 2007 for Arabic writing.

That’s when I got stuck. How do you install Arabic fonts on this version of Windows?

I searched on Google and checked Microsoft’s online help without much luck. I even downloaded Open Office to try to enable that for writing in Arabic. Finally I managed to get Word 2007 enabled for Arabic writing. Like most things in Windows 7, it’s pretty simple once you know where to go.

  1. From the Windows menu, click on All Programs.
  2. Click Control Panel, and then choose Clock, Region and Language. 
  3. In that window, choose Region and Language.
  4. Click “Change keyboards or other input methods.” This takes you to a screen with four tabs across the top. Choose the Keyboards and Languages tab, and then click the “Change keyboards” button. A new window will open.
  5. Under the General tab, I had an English keyboard and a Chinese keyboard listed in Installed Services. (You may have a different selection listed on your machine.) Click the Add button on the right, and you will see many countries listed alphabetically. Find the Arab country that you want (I chose Yemen), and click on the “+” to the left of the word Arabic.
  6. A sub menu will open with two choices, Keyboard and Other. Click on the “+” sign beside Keyboard, and then click the checkbox beside Arabic 101.
  7. All you need to do now is to click either OK or Apply to get out of each successive screen, and back to the desktop.

When you next open Word 2007, you should see an icon “EN” in the taskbar at the bottom right side of your desktop. Click on this icon, and there is a list of all the available languages. Choose Arabic, and you are set to starting writing in Arabic.

Since Arabic is written from right to left, you must right-justify your document in Word 2007. 

I found that my keyboard continued to type English numbers, rather than Arabic. I’ve solved this by going to the Word 2007 Insert menu, and from the Symbol drop-down menu, choosing the Arabic numbers that I need, and inserting them manually. 

Posted in Arabic, Arabic Translation, Learning Arabic | Tagged , , , , |

Focus on Contemporary Arabic Translation

May 23, 2010 by Alan Earnshaw

“Focus on Contemporary Arabic” is a resource for intermediate Arabic students, and one of the most useful study aids I’ve used for listening and comprehension practice. “Focus on Contemporary Arabic” includes a DVD of interviews with native Arabic speakers from different countries, and a book that is basically a transcript of those interviews. The people on the DVD speak in fusha Arabic about various topics: family life, Arabic food, Arabic education, Arabic culture and customs.

My one criticism of Focus on Contemporary Arabic is that it doesn’t  provide an English translation for the interviews.  While listening and comprehension is what Focus is about, I still find it useful to have an English translation to refer to alongside the Arabic transcript. It helps me understand individual Arabic words and retain newly acquired Arabic vocabulary.

I decided recently to go back to Focus on Contemporary Arabic to translate the Arabic transcripts. It’s a good exercise for me, and I hope these transcripts will help others studying Arabic.

The Arabic transcripts in Focus on Contemporary Arabic reproduce exactly what the speaker actually says, neither adding nor leaving out any words. As much as the English language allows, I have tried to reproduce this approach in my translations.

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Arabic Short Story Translation: House of Flesh

May 17, 2010 by Alan Earnshaw

My latest translation is “House of Flesh” by Yusuf Idris, from A Reader of Modern Arabic Short Stories, edited by Sabry Hafez. I like the staccato quality of the original Arabic, so I’ve tried to retain that in the translation. The Arabic language in this story doesn’t allow for easy translation into English, though.

You may want to take a look at “The Essential Yusuf Idris,” edited by Denys Johnson-Davis, on Google Books. It has several stories by Yusuf Idris available for reading online, including “House of Flesh.”  The stories are not complete, but fairly long excerpts. Comparing Johnson-Davis’ translation and mine shows how differently the same Arabic story can be translated.

This will be my last translation for a while. I want to focus on listening and speaking for the next few months, and perhaps return to translating later on.

Posted in Arabic, Arabic Short Stories, Arabic Stories, Arabic Translation, Learning Arabic | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Arabic Short Story Translation: Small Sun

May 8, 2010 by Alan Earnshaw

Zakariyya Tamir’s  ”Small Sun“  is the first story in A Reader of Modern Arabic Short Stories. It is a good story to begin with if you want to translate Arabic short stories. The story is simple, one of the shortest in the collection, and the grammar is not complicated. Although written in 1963, it reads more like a folk tale. The only challenge is the vocabulary. I had to go to the Arabic dictionary quite a bit to translate this story.

As with “The Heatwave,” I have tried to keep as close as possible to the author’s original Arabic in my translation. The simplicity of “Small Sun” makes it much easier to do that.

Posted in Arabic, Arabic Short Stories, Arabic Stories, Arabic Translation, Learning Arabic | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Another Arabic Short Story Translation: The Heatwave

May 4, 2010 by Alan Earnshaw

I’ve translated a second story from A Reader of Modern Arabic Short Stories, edited by Sabry Hafez. This story is called ” The Heatwave” by Yusuf Al-Sharuni.

I found the story’s stucture made this translation more confusing and difficult than “In The Village“  by Al-Badawi. “ The Heatwave” has two main characters, both named Mahmud, and each has a girlfriend whom he plans to marry. Both the young women are named Al-Haman.  The two Mahmuds will meet their two fiancees — separately — at 8 pm the same evening.

The author does not do much to help the reader follow the narrative. During a conversation between the two Mahmuds, it’s almost impossible to figure out which part of the dialogue belongs to either character. The author never indicates whether it’s Mahmud the intellectual who’s speaking, or Mahmud the shop keeper.  

“The Heatwave” is a very cerebral story. The narrator and both Mahmuds ruminate about one’s place in Egyptian society and about corruption in Egypt. Dispersed throughout are desciptions of how the heatwave affects the city and its inhabitants.

I’ve tried to keep as close as possible to the original Arabic, so there are some passages where the meaning may be a little hard to follow. It’s pretty hard to follow in the original Arabic, as well.

If anyone has comments on their own adventures translating “The Heatwave,” or any comments about this translation, I’d be happy to read them.

Posted in Arabic, Arabic Short Stories, Arabic Stories, Arabic Translation, Learning Arabic | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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