Concessions of a Conundrum - Transliteration versus translation

Submitted by M Tovey (United States), Feb 3, 2021 at 20:19

A conundrum is now before this observer, who for decades, being a student (never an expert) of various languages, Arabic being one of the later endeavors (only twenty years or so and an adherent of no one know Arabic like an Arab), and looking at Arabic from a study of the Levant to the Egyptian variant of Cairo to the more northern dialects of Lebanese and Syrian, which as was explained, were later versions.
So Arabic, from this perspective, is as subjected to the expertise of the 'author' who is explaining the version as much as someone trying to explain English in the King James Bible versus the New International without understanding the context, nor understanding that English translations of Semitic languages is complex at best and tests exercises in philology to the max.
This conundrum is here when attempting to discern between Dr. Pipes (whose dissertation on local dialectic Arabic decades ago is a source) and Dhimmi No More's more informal dissections of the language are intriguing and the fascination this observer has is all the more captivating in trying to understand the transliterations versus the translations. Thanks to you both for making it interesting.

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