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- The History of Arabic
- Arabic Dialects
- Writing in Arabic
- Buying Arabic Translations
- Buying Arabic Interpretation
The History of Arabic
Arabic has its roots from as early as the 4th Century, where Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions have been found. As the only surviving member of the Old North Arabian dialect group, Classical Arabic became a literary language and the official language of Islam from the 7th century onwards.
There are two main types of Arabic today. Modern Standard Arabic is used for most formal and written materials, whilst Classical Arabic is the language of the Qu’ran and classical literature. It has a different style and vocabulary from Modern Standard Arabic, and because of its use in the Qu’ran can be read by Muslims even if their native language is not Arabic.
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Arabic Dialects
Today, Arabic is mainly spoken in the Arab states of the Middle East and North Africa, and is the world’s 3rd most prolific first spoken language, after English and French. There are around 30 varieties of Arabic in total, each with their own written style and vocabulary preferences.
'Colloquial Arabic' is a collective term for the spoken varieties of Arabic. The major dialectal groups include Egyptian Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Gulf Arabic, Levantine Arabic and Maghrebi Arabic, although there are local varieties specific to a particular region.
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Writing in Arabic
Today, the Arabic alphabet is the second most widely used alphabet in the world and uses a total of 28 characters. The Arabic script is written horizontally from right to left, in a cursive style, with most letters directly connected to the one that follows it. There are no distinct upper or lower case letter forms, but each Arabic letter can have up to four different forms depending on whether it appears at the beginning, middle or end of a word, or on its own. Extra letters are also used when transliterating a foreign word into Arabic. Numbers are written from left to right.
When using a Latin-based writing system (such as on a QWERTY keyboard) Arabic letters are replaced by letters that are phonetically equivalent. When there isn’t an equivalent Latin letter, numerals and other characters have been used instead. This type of transliteration has been unofficially named the ‘Arabic Chat Alphabet’, and is used widely for very informal situations such as youths communicating with each other on instant messaging programmes.
There is not as yet an universal transliteration standard for Arabic, but systems include the ‘Standard Arabic Technical Translation System’ (SATTS) and the ISO:233. Each standard has its strengths and weaknesses, mainly because many Arabic vowels are not written out, and transliterations standards vary depending on their focus on spelling, pronunciation, or even other factors.
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Buying Arabic Translations
When buying Arabic translation it is essential to remember that Arabic is written from right to left. This might affect the final presentation of your document.
When translating Arabic into English our Arabic translator will suggest transliterations of Arabic names. But we also suggest that you check these with the person described as there are so many types of Arabic the English spellings may vary considerably.
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Buying Arabic Interpretation
When buying Arabic Interpretation it is very useful to know where your Arabic speakers or delegates are from. Our Arabic speakers use a ‘neutral’ form of Arabic, but because of dialect variations there may be some cases where more specialized interpreters native to a particular country are required, such as Libyan Arabic and Central Asian Arabic, spoken in Afghanistan.
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