Translation and Chaos in the Arab World: Situation & Remedy

Abstract

Translation is regarded to as a positive means in society due to the communication facilitation it afford,  whereas it can be sometimes negative device mainly in the Arab non knowledge productive world. Chaos in vocabulary and notably terms is most of the time if not always due to translation in the Arab world. Arabs arrive to a stage of not being able to communicate successfully, and understand each other due to the differences in their sources of translation, because Arabs of the Middle East essentially, and of the east at large, translate from English and coin their words and glossary from the English worldview. Whereas those of the Maghreb translate prominently from French language and consequently coin their words and their glossary from the French worldview, and consequently a chaos should be clearly observed in the use of terms between the east and west of the Arab world, to which translation contributes with generosity. The dare of calling it a chaos is catered by the fact that the phenomenon does not only touch merely words but concepts as well, and as a result, polluted communicative environment might be implanted by time. This paper shall investigate the chaos made by translating from different linguistic sources mainly in specialized fields and try to explain the situation and suggest solutions.