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Muraija for Translators

Getting the nuances right

Muraija can help both native and non-native speakers, either translating from or into Arabic.

Translating into Arabic

Non-native speakers might discover collocations they were not aware of; for native speakers it't a tool to call up collocations they are likely to know.

Assuming that we opt for using "صمت" in our translation: What adjective can be added to convey the meaning of "roaring silence"?

If we consider both "انتفاضة" and "ثورة" valid translations for "revolution" in this context, we can look at their respective verb + object collocations. Is there a verb belonging to the semantic field of "fire"?

Why not just use a translation database like reverso-context?

Of course, you can look up a phrase like "roaring silence" in reverso-context, but the less common a phase is, the less likely you are to get helpful results - in this very case, you don't get any result for the phrase. Even the simple action of looking up becomes complicated when conjucation or discontinuity enters the game. Would you search for "revolution flared up", "revolution had flared up", "revolution flares up" ...? (God created language and Satan added his heavy tail :-)

A second downside of this approach relates to the very nature of the translation databases: They represent only a small subset of Arabic texts, those translated into or from English.

Translating from Arabic

Recall the collocational range of the source term, to be able to judge translation alternatives based on their respective collocational range.

Roaring silence was all over the place.

The revolution flared up, and it was not about candles but about hydrogen turning into helium.

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