AWEJ Special issue on Translation No. (2) 2013 pp.25-41
Arabization Revisited in the Third Millennium
Hasan Said Ghazala
Department of English , College of Social Sciences,
Umm Al-Qura University, Saudi Arabia
Abstract
Arabization has ever been one of the major concerns of the academic circles and the specialists concerned. It has gone through many ups and downs – more downs than ups – throughout the history of Arabic and Arab translation. Hot argument about its legitimacy, possibility and, necessity and usefulness is still going on in the Arab World. Much is written about it more emotionally than rationally in Arabic, but only occasionally rationally – if any – in English. The boundaries of this paper cover the major questions and aspects of the big issue of Arabization: legitimacy of Arabization and background issues; scientific terminology and Arabization: Problems and solutions and means of Arabization. It is hoped that covering this number of topics of Arabization would contribute significantly to the process of Arabization in our age of sunshine industries, computer sciences, the Internet technologies, the amazing revolution of communications, nuclear weapons and nanotechnology. These sciences in particular, and medical and other exact and applied sciences in general, bring forth a huge number of new terminologies that await Arabization in earnest. The ultimate objective of this paper is to argue for the urgent necessity for Arabization in the Third Millennium, not only as a matter of national pride, but also for teaching, educational, academic, socio-political, socio-religious and socio-cultural reasons. Its use, usefulness, validity and feasibility are remarkable linguistically, semantically as well as heuristically . It represents a challenge as the right and the duty to be taken up by Arab academics and specialists to meet the Arab Nation’s urgent needs for education and knowledge in her own native Language, Arabic, by means of Arabization.
Key Words: Arabization, translation, scientific terms, problem, Language Academies