|
 |
Translating "Frozen" into Arabic | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 7145 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes  Studies: Uzbek | Message 1 of 9 05 June 2014 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
Further to the vexed question of whether Arabic learners should start with Modern Standard Arabic or a dialect, it seems the issue is causing controversy in the movie industry as well. Here's an interesting comment on the recent translation of the movie "Frozen" into MSA, which apparently has upset quite a number of Arabs. (Although the choice also has supporters, as is seen from the many comments it's drawn.)
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2014/05/translat ing-frozen-into-arabic.html 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5263 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 2 of 9 06 June 2014 at 12:11am | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
Thanks for the link, Daristani. I found the article very interesting.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| fiolmattias Triglot Groupie Sweden geocities.com/fiolmaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6690 days ago 62 posts - 129 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, Arabic (Written) | Message 3 of 9 06 June 2014 at 4:36pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
I don't mind it, the "Let it Go" song is beautiffuly sung in MSA
youtube.com/watch?v=oUArQW09Two As just about any other cartoons besides Disney is in MSA, I really don't see why not. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6062 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 4 of 9 07 June 2014 at 4:02am | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
Experience tells me that Arabic-speaking people are normally not very concerned about such "controversies".
Unless I'm mistaken, I see no evidence of one here. Apart from that the author tries to create, that is. And he lives in the USA. Edited by Luso on 07 June 2014 at 4:09am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5321 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 5 of 9 07 June 2014 at 11:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
For those of you who don't speak Arabic, MSA is to Arabic dialects approximately what Shakespeare's English is to modern colloquial English. I.e. it pretty much has the same effect on native Arab speakers that Shakespeare's English has on modern English speakers. It may sound a bit weird, but is generally understandable.
IMHO, Elias Muhanna's criticisms are too harsh and often unfair. In his translations of the Arabic lyrics, he deliberately chose very archaic and/or very formal English expressions. For example, he used "thy" instead of "your" for the second person possessive pronoun.
The corresponding Arabic line reads: اطلقي سرّك [aṭliqī sirraki]. The imperative "aṭliqī" can mean discharge (as in "discharge a firearm") but, IMHO, it's much more often used with the meaning "to release, to set free etc." I.e., a neutral translation would be "Release your secret."
The corresponding Arabic line reads: لن أتحمّل العذاب [lan atahammala [a]l-ʿadhāb(a)]. Again there's nothing super formal about it. It simply means "I will no longer suffer this torment." I could go on like this for a while. Let's have a look at a final translation mentioned in the article, which sounds rather funny in English:
The corresponding Arabic line reads: الثلج لا يشعرني باكتئاب [ath-thalju la yushʿirunī b[i]-ikti'āb(i)], which simply means "The snow doesn't make me feel sad." (I.e., there was absolutely no need for Shakespearean verb forms such as "instigateth.") IMHO, whoever did the Arabic translation did a good job. Note that the English original "Let it go" doesn't rhyme, but the Arabic translation (aṭliqī sirraki) does and so do most Arabic lines, which is no small feat. There's no doubt that the translator occasionally took poetic license to create a rhyming translation, but the end result is nowhere as obtuse as Elias Muhanna want us to believe. FYI: The Arabic lyrics are here and the video is here. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Al-Malik Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member United Kingdom arabicgenie.com Joined 7135 days ago 221 posts - 294 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German*, Spanish, Arabic (Written), Dutch, French, Arabic (classical) Studies: Mandarin, Persian | Message 6 of 9 08 June 2014 at 8:46pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
I agree with Doitsujin on this issue. Arabs are exposed anyways to a lot of formal Arabic on TV (news, documentaries), radio, all of the written language (including newspapers and books), religious sermons etc.
It's true that MSA will sound somewhat more "distant" or "formal" than the local dialect one grew up with; however, for someone from Morocco, for instance, Egyptian Arabic will also sound peculiar and distract from the experience. I believe that MSA is a good compromise to make the content as accessible as possible for the largest amount of viewers. I agree, though, that they could have dropped some (most?) of the endings to make the language more direct/approachable. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| fiolmattias Triglot Groupie Sweden geocities.com/fiolmaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6690 days ago 62 posts - 129 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, Arabic (Written) | Message 7 of 9 08 June 2014 at 10:04pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Didn't they? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5321 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 8 of 9 09 June 2014 at 7:35am | IP Logged | ||||||||
They usually dropped endings at the end of a phrase or sentence (Pausa reading) and only kept them when it was absolutely necessary. BTW, the author of the article, Elias Muhanna, also gave an NPR interview in which he claimed that the use of MSA in children's TV is part of a larger shift:
IMHO, it makes economic sense to produce children's TV shows only in MSA. It might also help making MSA (and Arabic in general) more popular. I'm pretty sure that the initiators of a 2010 campaign in Lebanon to save Arabic (BBC article; campaign website) would appreciate this decision, because children will naturally want to watch the hugely popular Disney children's TV shows, and if they're only available in MSA, they'll over time learn at least some MSA through assimilation. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
