3 Primary Challenges Of Arabic To Turkish Translation Services 

Arabic is an important and one of the ancient Afrosiatic language members. This belongs to the Arab world mainly. As per the statistics, this language happens to be the third most widespread official language. A liturgic language of Islam, it is also proudly included in the six official languages of the United Nations. There are 380 million native speakers of the Arabic language, and 330 of them speak modern standard Arabic as their second language.

Coming to Turkish, it is one of the most popular members of the Turkic languages which has 100 million speakers. The language is the national language of Turkey. Moreover, the Turkish diaspora speaks it as their language in Germany, Austria Greece, Cyprus, and a few other parts of Europe. According to the survey, Turkish stands 8th among the most spoken languages of the world. When both languages are considered for translation it is important to look deeper in the roots and grammar composition. Many people find both languages similar apparently to a few shared connections. However every language pair comes with its set of challenges while translating to and from each other.

Translating from the Arabic language to Turkish comes with certain challenges, which are obvious looking at the language’s roots, origin, and overall composition.

Three of the major challenges may include

1) Grammatical Differences:

Grammatic differences are evident. A few common factors of grammatical differences include the following:

Semitic VS Agglutinative

As Arabic is a semitic language, it has complex verb conjugations. The root words are also somewhat complex. Turkish, on the other hand, is agglutinative; they add suffixes to the words to create new meanings. This difference often demands the restructuring of the sentence for a natural flow in the Turkish language.

Sentence Structure

The sentence structure that the Arabic language follows is verb subject object order which is different from Turkish i.e., subject object verb. The translators often find it tough while working on the Arabic and Turkish translation services. However, a session in advance about all these facts can help them to look for alternative options. This is evident to maintain the clarity and coherence in the Turkish language.

Gender and number agreement

Gender and number agreement can make the translation process even more complex. Talking about these factors in the Arabic language, there is a more complex system of grammatical gender and number agreement for nouns and verbs. While attempting the translation to or from Turkish, it gets challenging because Turkish has a more simpler system.

2) Vocabulary Gaps

While working on translation in two languages, the vocabulary is also a great concern. There could be vocabulary gaps due to the lack of alternate words.

Loanwords VS Native Equivalents

Arabic is an ancient language and has a great influence on its fellow languages. Therefore, a number of loanwords exist in the Turkish language, most of them particularly come in formal contexts. However, it happens with all languages that some concepts, words, and phrases come with not an appropriate or suitable Turkish equivalent in the Arabic language. The translators often find it challenging where they have to use descriptive phrases to cover the topic and phrases.

Technical Terminology

The translation of technical subjects such as medicine, law, and engineering can get challenging for the businesses and people involved. Though Arabic loanwords may exist excessively, the modern Turkish audience could have to struggle to understand this content. Translators often have to opt for newly coined terms to explain the concepts in rather simple language.

3) Cultural Nuances

Cultural nuances are an integral part of Arabic and Turkish translation services.

Religious References

Religious references are crucial to consider and take into account for translating for any culture. Arabic and Turkish both come with a rich Islamic heritage. However, these belong to somewhat different cultures and hence cultural interpretations and expressions might differ. It is important that translators not only understand these factors and have sound knowledge of both cultures but also respect the religious beliefs, keeping their personal opinions aside.

Humor and Idioms

Humor and idioms are an essence of every language, and these also help in beautifying the Arabic and Turkish languages as well. However, the situation gets testing when translators fail to translate the humor as it is in the process of Arabic translation services. The translators should be native speakers to understand the cultural and humorous context of certain jokes, puns as well as idioms in Arabic and also find creative ways for their translation.

Conclusion 

Arabic to Turkish and vice versa translation can be challenging due to the obvious differences between both languages. The main differences come with grammar. This may include the Semitic with agglutinative nature of language, different sentence order, and gender and number agreement. The next challenge is about the vocabulary gap containing loanwords and technical terminology. The cultural nuances also stand significantly as a challenging factor in translating due to religious references and difficulties in the translation of humor and idioms.

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