Arabic: Translation & consecutive interpreting

Today, around 300 million people worldwide speak Arabic as a native or second language. The Arabic language belongs to the Semitic language family and is the most widely used language of this family. The vast expansion of Arabic, which was originally only spoken by a nomadic tribe on the Arabian Peninsula, can especially be attributed to the rise and spread of Islam and the conquests of the Arabs.

Modern Standard Arabic is the official language in 26 countries and a successor to Classical Arabic. Although Modern Standard Arabic is used for written communication and in official contexts, the spoken language varies widely from country to country, and speakers of different dialects often cannot communicate without problems. This apparent paradox can be explained by the fact that Modern Standard Arabic is based on Classical Arabic, which is also the language of the Koran and of poetry. Spoken Arabic, on the other hand, developed in different ways throughout the centuries according to region.

Some loan words from Arabic can be found in the English language, such as“admiral“ - amīr al-baḥr, “mattress“ - maṭraḥ, "sofa” - ṣuffa.

When choosing Arabic interpreters and translators, you have to take their native country or even region into account as well as the variant of Arabic they speak. Obviously, the interpreter’s and translator’s experience and competence also play an important role here. Finding the right specialist translator or interpreter for Arabic can thus cost a lot of time and energy and still go wrong in the worst case. That’s why we recommend that you always consult AP Fachübersetzungen, the Nuremberg translation and interpreting company: we conduct all the research necessary to guarantee optimal communication and translation for you. In the case of certified translations, we only use publicly appointed and sworn Arabic translators for official documents with many years of experience. Depending on the occasion, we employ our best consecutive, court, liaison, conference and simultaneous interpreters for your meeting, training course, negotiation or conference. With us, your translation and interpreting projects are in the best of hands.

Going back to the 8^th century BC, Arabic is the only surviving language of the ancient Northern Arabian dialect group. It dates back to pre-Islamic inscriptions and is closely related to Aramaic, Hebrew, Ugaritic and Phoenician. Derived from Proto-Semitic, Arabic is part of the Afro-Asiatic language group.

Initially, the Arabic language was used by a small nomadic tribe that travelled around the Arabian Peninsula. The spread of the Arabic language is associated with the spread of Islamic influence and the conquering of other nations by Arabic tribes. Today, Arabic is one of the most widely used languages in the world.

12 different Arabic dialects are spoken in 26 countries today. Since the original Standard Arabic is hardly ever spoken as a native language today, Modern Standard Arabic is used on occasions requiring formal language. In written form, however, it is still used today (except in Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria, since French serves this function). In this context, it should be explained that what is generally called Modern Standard Arabic basically only refers to the spoken variant of written Arabic. It differs from Classical Standard Arabic in vocabulary and can also vary in pronunciation and grammar depending on the speaker’s level of education. Colloquial Arabic in all its forms is first and foremost a spoken language used in the Arab world for everyday affairs. It differs radically from the written language.

Due to all these subtleties of the Arabic language, it is only advisable to entrust the translation of your texts or interpreting projects to a native speaker or very experienced language expert. At AP Fachübersetzungen, we work exclusively with certified and experienced Arabic translators and interpreters to ensure the high quality and accuracy of your translation.

The Arabic alphabet consists of 28 letters, and the written form of the Arabic language is read from right to left. After Latin, it is the most widely used type of writing in the world. It is also only running hand: while the Latin alphabet can either be written in block letters or cursive, the letters are always joined in Arabic. This means that some letters have up to four different forms. Unlike the German language, for example, Arabic only has consonants and long vowels. Signs for short vowels were not introduced until later to make learning and reading the language easier.

Nouns in Arabic have two genders (feminine and masculine) and can either be definite (determined) or indefinite (indetermined). While there are only two kinds of number in English, the Arabic language has three: singular and plural as well as dual (two). We know four cases from the German language. Arabic, however, only has three cases: nominative, genitive and accusative. The number of word classes is also smaller in Arabic. Basically, there are only three different word classes: nouns, verbs and prepositions. The function of prepositions in Arabic can be compared to that of adverbs in German.

Due to its morphological, syntactical, phonetic and phonological characteristics, Arabic is considered to be one of the languages presenting the biggest challenges for technical processing, both in spoken and written form. Thus, the particularities of Arabic semantics frequently pose considerable difficulties for machine translation at the moment. However, even the “analogue“ translator has to take several things into account since Arabic is very different from other languages, particularly its writing system and morphology, which means that many things cannot simply be “imported” from other languages. Here, the Arabic translator has the task of bridging these gaps between the languages sensibly and efficiently, doing justice to the source text and delivering a target text of excellent quality.