A free workshop on translation from Urdu to Arabic at the Faculty of Arts

The Graduate Follow-up Unit at the Faculty of Arts at Ain Shams University organized a free workshop on: “Translation from Urdu to Arabic,” in the presence of many third-level and fifth-level students in the Department of Oriental Languages and Literatures, and graduate students.

The workshop was held under the patronage of Prof. Ghada Farouk, Vice President of the University for Community Service and Environmental Development Affairs, Prof. Hanan Kamel, Dean of the Faculty, under the supervision of Prof. Hanan Muhammad Salem, Vice Dean of the Faculty for Community Service and Environmental Development Affairs.

The workshop was presented by Dr. Enas Abdel Aziz, and she began by thanking the faculty administration and the community service and environmental development sector for their efforts and activity in serving students and providing many translation workshops that put the student on the first path to excellence in translation to keep pace with the labor market, and that is free of charge. She also extended special thanks to the participating students for their keenness to attend and benefit from the workshop, and then began presenting the scientific material for the workshop, which covered the following topics: defining translation and its importance, the role of translation in building bridges of communication between different peoples and societies, and increasing cultural exchange between languages, the most important areas of the labor market that depend on translation include: Radio and television, the press, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and diplomatic bodies, commercial companies, tourism, and other fields.

It also touched on introducing students to the types of written and oral translation and the difference between them, and the most important types of written translation, including legal translation, commercial translation, media translation, technical translation, literary translation and others, and the types of oral translation (perspective, consecutive and simultaneous).

The lecture introduced the translator, the most important characteristics of a good translator, and the most important tools that a translator must possess in order to be able to pursue the field of translation and achieve excellence in it.

She explained to the students the stages that the translator must undertake during the translation process, which are identifying the bright points in the text and the dark points, then researching scientifically to illuminate the dark sides of the text, whether it is the names of characters or places or searching for the meanings of new vocabulary and terms contained in the text and other things. Ideas that the translator is unaware of, which represent the dark points, then determining the appropriate strategy for the text, whether it is a literal translation or an adapted translation. The doctor knew the difference between each of them and the most important features that distinguish them and what is taken from them, then wrote and produced the target text for the Arab reader.

The doctor presented translation procedures that help the student reach the optimal form of translation, such as copying, borrowing, equivalence, constant transposition, commentary, and footnotes, with the practical application of some Urdu models and how to translate them.

Then she asked the students about the most important difficulties they face while translating from Urdu, and I presented solutions to these difficulties and problems, including Urdu sentence structure, translating foreign English, Arabic, and Persian words into Urdu, the problem of translating specialized terms, and how to use specialized dictionaries and dictionaries and their importance in the translation process.

Then discussed the common mistakes that a translator makes and are criticized for during translation, and how to avoid them so that the translator does not receive negative comments from references or companies he works for.

The doctor presented documents in Urdu representing various examples of translation fields, such as a marriage contract, a shop lease contract, a request for a religious fatwa, commercial invoices, a user manual for a machine, and a political press text from Pakistani newspapers.

At the end of the workshop, an evaluation form was distributed to measure the extent to which students benefited from the scientific material presented, the presentation method, and all aspects of the workshop preparations, and everyone was keen to take souvenir photos.