Arabic is the second most spoken language in the world, conceding only to the Chinese language. For the East Arabic is as English for the whole world. Arabic is not only the language of the religion of millions of Muslims in the world, but it is also a very important part of culture, economy, politics, and especially mass media. One of the characteristic of the translation from the Arabic language is that a large part of the native speakers speak dialects that are far from the literary norm. However, mass media, Internet and globalization in general contribute to the fact that the population is gradually moving towards using the literary language in very day life.
The largest Arabic dialectal differences are observed between the following countries: Syria, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Oman. Therefore, ordering a translation from Russian into Arabic, it is best to point out to the fact which country the translation is being done for. Literary Arabic is considered to be Arabic in Syria and Lebanon.
Unlike European languages Arabic is written from right to left, with punctuation positioned upside down. However, this is not the only difficulty in the translation from Arabic. Another difficulty lies in the fact that it can be hard to figure out where in the text there is a proper noun with no translation required and where – a common noun of foreign origin, because there is no uppercase letters in the Arabic language.
The basic structure of the vast majority of Arabic words is a three-letter root. It is exactly the root of the word that carries the main semantic meaning. New word forms and related words are formed by adding inflections to the root. When translating into the Arabic language one should be aware that the sentences in it are constructed according to the scheme: "verb-subject-complement".
Translation from Arabic of the numerals and dates requires special attention. Numerals can be written in Arabic numerals or European ones. In addition, Arabic translators should pay attention to the fact that, despite the general direction of the Arabic script from right to left, numerals are written as we are used to see them - from left to right. Dates in the Islamic calendar are different from the Gregorian one. Here, the chronology starts from the Hijra, i.e. the date of the migration of the Prophet Muhammad and his followers to the city of Medina from Mecca in September 622 CE of the Gregorian calendar.
