Movement of Translation in the Arab World: History and Contributions
Richhan A. Al-Tamimi, English and Translation dep., college of arts, Jerash private university, Jerash - Jordan.
Abstract
Interest in translation and Arabization started in the second century of Hegira when the Arabs mixed with other nations for political, economic, commercial and cultural reasons. However, the Ottoman, Western colonists and the domination of the foreign language, specifically English and French, have led to a serious lack of a large number of scientific and technical terms in Arabic. Nowadays the need for translation and Arabization has become quite urgent to catch up with Western scientific development. So Arab researchers and thinkers have exerted their utmost efforts to revive Arabization and translate books in all fields of knowledge into Arabic, particularly in pure and applied sciences to enrich Arabic in all the fields of knowledge and meet the needs of universities in the Arab world for such knowledge. So, Arab thinkers and translators have worked side by side and translated books and set up academies and institutions of Arabic language to be on equal footing with the Western languages. Yet, efforts exerted in Arabization have been and still face many problems, most important of which are linguistic ones such as diaglossia and using foreign terms. Thus, adequate solutions must be found and suggested to overcome all the problems that hinder Arabization and the translation process due to the need to translate all knowledge into Arabic to cope with the fast scientific development and catch up with other human cultures in the Arab world.