On Sunday, October 22, 2017 at 7:08:18 AM UTC+6,
samh...@gmail.com wrote:
Winnie-the-Pooh in Arabic
A Translation of A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh
Winnie-the-Pooh is the most popular children's book in the world. This is the first known translation of Winnie-the-Pooh into Arabic.
We believe the reason Winnie-the-Pooh has not caught on in Arabic speaking countries is there are no bears in Arabic speaking countries. Winnie-the-Pooh is most popular in countries where there are a lot of bears, such as Russia. There was a species of
bear living in the Atlas mountains of Morocco, but they all went extinct. The last one was shot and killed in 1870.
Bears were not native to Africa. The Atlas Bear likely was introduced to Africa from Spain by the Romans who imported Iberian bears for spectacles.
Arabic is a language spoken by 450 million people. It is one of the six official languages of the United Nations and is the fifth most spoken language in the world.
Spoken Arabic differs widely from country to country and Arabic speakers from different countries will often not be able to understand each other. However, written Arabic as used in the newspapers and in this book is fairly uniform everywhere. Arabic
is written using the Arabic script. Arabic is a Central Semitic language, closely related Aramaic, Hebrew and Phoenician.
During the Dark ages of Europe, the intellectual center of the world was Arabia. The Arabs invented modern mathematics. Our numeral system of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and most importantly 0 was invented by the Arabs. Multiplication and long division
were invented by the Arabs. The mathematical terms of Arabic origin include "algebra", "alcohol", "alchemy", "alkali", "zenith" and "nadir".
The purpose of this book is to help Arabic speakers learn English and to help English speakers learn Arabic. To have a translation as close as possible to the original is the most useful.
The name for Winnie-the-Pooh in Arabic is wayny-th-bw. Bear is yatahamal or يتحمل The Rabbit is أرنب al'arnab. Christopher Robin is Kristufar Rubin.
Ishi Press has reprinted translations of Winnie-the-Pooh into 39 languages thus far. We have published it in Afrikaans, Albanian, Arabic, Armenian, Bengali, Bulgarian, Cebuano, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Finnish, French, German,
Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Sinhalese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Yiddish, Hindi, Urdu, Vietnamese, Khowar, Kalasha and Latin. We have six more languages lined up.
This translation into Arabic is part of project to translate Winnie-the-Pooh into other languages. The idea is children need to learn to read at an early age and the best way to teach them to read is to provide reading materials that they find
interesting. Children around the world laugh when they see Winnie-the-Pooh saying and doing silly things. Since Winnie-the-Pooh is the most popular children's book world-wide, translating this book into the different languages of the world will be
conducive to teaching children to read in those languages.
Translations are always difficult. A word in any language will almost never have exactly the same meaning in another language. For example, at the beginning of the English Language original of Winnie-the-Pooh, on the third page there is the following
sentence, “He came to a sandy bank and in the bank was a large hole.”
Now you may be wondering, “Was that because somebody has robbed the bank?” Of course, you know the answer. The bank has not been robbed. But if your translator is somebody not familiar with the banking system, he may not provide the proper
translation to this sentence.
We are not translating the entire book. We are only translating Chapter 2, which is the most interesting, most popular and shortest chapter. Winnie-the-Pooh is based on the most popular children's character in the world. Part of the reason for this is
Winnie-the-Pooh was based on an actual living bear in the London Zoo named Winnie. Christopher Robin is the name of a real person who was the son of the original author, A. A. Milne. The son had a teddy bear he liked to carry around with him he named
Winnie-the-Pooh.
Winnie-the-Pooh is perhaps unique for a children's book in that it is based on real people and historical events. Christopher Robin was a real person. As a child, he had a teddy bear he named “Winnie-the-Pooh”. The bear was named after a real bear
in the London Zoo named Winnie. Winnie had been found in the forest near Winnipeg, Canada. His owner had brought him to England and eventually had donated him to the London Zoo.
Because this book is about real people and events, this places the book in a different legal position than other children's books with cartoon characters such as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck which are purely the inventions of their creators. The real
original Winnie-the-Pooh teddy bear is now on display at the New York Public Library Children's Room on 42nd Street at Fifth Avenue. Elvis cannot be copyrighted because Elvis was a real person, so anybody can write their own stories about Elvis, although
you cannot copy somebody else's story. This has helped spread the popularity of Winnie-the-Pooh.
We would like to hope that this little bear, Winnie-the-Pooh, can bring peace and unity to the languages of the region.
Sam Sloan
Bronx, New York
USA
October 21, 2017
Hi, If you need to translate this in Bengali/Bangla, please let me know.
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