The academic research I have been practicing since I joined CityTech, which is represented by my new publications and conferences, is part of a scientific project that addresses Arabic in two levels: translation and terminology.
It is well-known that Arabic suffers from two problems: the first one is terminological and lies in the great delay that the Arabic language knows in updating the new terminology that appears daily in the field of technology, sciences, etc. Arabic language is not present in these fields and students and researchers do not find enough Arabic terminology to carry out their research, which makes the use of Arabic limited and does not meet the requirements as a modern language.
The second problem is related to translation. The reality of translation in the Arab world is painful and characterized by randomness and backwardness linked to the Arab nation’s cultural and cultural backwardness. There are frightening numbers estimation revealed by UNESCO, which reported that Arabs of more than 270 million people translate only 475 books annually, while Spain, with a population of 38 million, translates more than 10,000 books annually. While every million citizens in Hungary have about 519 books a year and the share of every million Spaniards in the year is 920, the average number of translated books in the Arab world is only 4.4 books per million citizens per year.
Thus, in order to contribute to the solution of the terminological problem, I have published many tri-language dictionaries (English, French, Arabic) in the fields of informatics, Internet, e-commerce, Public Administration, food and kitchen, etc. The last of these dictionaries was A Lexicon of Mobile Telephony Terms, Published in July 2019. This Lexicon is considered as a new and very useful tool for those communicating in Arabic to cope with the flow of modern terms and concepts of Information Technology with their precise linguistic and cognitive specificities. Its publication is an attempt to bring these terms and concepts closer to researchers, specialists, students, technical editors, and those in media and communication who face daily problems of searching for Arabic equivalents of foreign terms.
I have also another book in progress. It is a specialized dictionary describing the essential terminology of Social Media field. The dictionary is trilingual (English, French and Arabic).
In 2016, I translated the Handbook of Terminology into Arabic. An important theoretical and practical terminological project that has been completed in collaboration with the Translation Bureau of the Public Works and Government Services, Ottawa, Canada and was published as electronic version on the website of this institution.
With regard to the second problem of translation, in addition to the books I have translated in the past in collaboration with the prestigious Arab Translation Organization in Beirut, Lebanon, I recently translated Digital Anthropology (January 2020) into Arabic in collaboration with the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities, as part of a pioneering translation project in the Arab world called the Knowledge Transfer Project, which seeks to translate 50 books in various disciplines. This project has clearly defined the goals it seeks to achieve, which are:
1. To contribute to the transfer of knowledge to the Kingdom of Bahrain and the Arab world by way of translation that reflects our real needs and fundamental priorities in an accurate and honest way. In doing so, it provides translated books as reliable reference materials to researchers, students, and readers in general; while at the same time, contributes to the advancement of the Arabic language and its terminology.
2. To contribute to the exchange of knowledge and expertise, especially between young Arab and European researchers in the fields of humanities, social sciences, and the arts.
3. To support intercultural dialogue in order to deepen understanding, and to correct any inaccurate images, ideas, and preconceptions that may exist.
