Blog

Where Latin and Arabic Meet: A Bridging of Two Alphabets

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 13:13:03 +0000

Wonderful piece from The New Yorker on Lebanese designer Rana Abou Rjeily's creation of Mirsaal, a typeface family expressly designed to work in both the Latin and Arabic alphabets. In Mirsaal, the calligraphic Arabic alphabet is rendered in a detached-print type that reads more similarly to the Latin print alphabet, reviving twentieth-century attempts to create an Arabic more legible to Westerners. The use in text books of typefaces such as Mirsaal, which means 'messenger' in Arabic could be a boon for Western students taking their first steps in recognising and learning Arabic words.

Babylonian, dead for millennia, now online

Fri, 08 Oct 2010 18:44:14 +0000

The sound of the ancient Babylonian language has been brought back to life thanks to Cambridge academic, Martin Worthington. His website speechisfire.com hosts some 30 audio files of this extinct language, which include extracts from "The Epic of Gilgamesh," and the "Codex Hammurabi," one of the world's oldest set of laws. Babylonian died out some time in the first century AD and its writing system, Cuneiform, was only deciphered in the 19th century. Martin Worthington's quest to work out what the language actually sounded like has breathed new life into this ancient tongue; in listening to the audio files you are struck, more than anything, by a feeling of familiarity through the similarity in sound of Babylonian to its modern offspring such as Arabic.

'Historic' day as first non-latin web addresses go live

Thu, 06 May 2010 14:36:44 +0000

The world wide web took an histroic step forward today as the first non-latin web addresses went live, according to the BBC. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are the first countries to have so-called "country codes" written in Arabic scripts. Hopefully, as more people surf the web and see these addresses in their web browsers they will feel a little less english-centric in attitude. In time, who knows, this may nudge a few more of us to take up learning other languages.

Poetry Translation Centre

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:07:00 +0000

Stumbled upon the web site of the highly commendable, Poetry Translation Centre. The idea of the PTC is to translate contemporary poetry from Africa, Asia and Latin America to a high literary standard and thus enable English poetry to engage more fully with the rich poetic traditions of the many languages now spoken in the UK. The really nice thing about the web site is that the poems are first presented in their original language, then in a literal translation, and finally in full translation. As an example, check out this beautiful, short, Arabic poem, عُبور (Crossing) by Abdullah al Ryami from Oman.

Gaining in translation

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:00:49 +0000

Interesting story from the UAE National newspaper on the role of Arabic translator Humphrey Davies in helping to bring contemporary works of Arabic literature to a western audience. The article goes on to look at the other side of the coin: initiatives in the Arabic-speaking world to publish works of European literature into Arabic.