Practical Applications for Arabic!

The other night I was relaxing after dinner when my 16-year-old host brother called me over. He was in urgent need of my translation skills.

                The problem? He was playing a violent video game (Freedom Fighter), and all the dialogue was in English.  “Now that you’ve found the C4,” grumbled a scruffy man in the game, “all you’ve gotta do is blow up the gas station!” We didn’t exactly learn this vocab in class. Nevertheless, I stumbled through it in Arabic. “You know the place where…. for example… cars go…. for petroleum? You must make it go like this!” (accompanied by a vigorous charade for an explosion). And so on.

                I have my Arabic teacher, Brahim, to thank for my translation successes. I have no idea how to say “gas station” or “explode” or “grenade” in Arabic, but Brahim has taught me to express myself without necessarily knowing the vocabulary. (After all, if we speak English in class we are forced to do push-ups!) Of course I’ve learned a lot of grammar and vocabulary from Arabic class, but one of the greatest skills I’ve been learning is expressing myself without knowing all the right words. Descriptions (“gas station” = “the place where cars go for petroleum”) and charades go a long way. Shukran ya ustath!