Friday, December 22, 2006

Arabic Language confusion

I got a piece of mail today from my auto insurance agency. It was addressed to Kareail Narey Toma. As we told our Arabic teacher many times, it is not easy to translate English into Arabic and vice versa. There are a few sounds in Arabic that don't exist in English, and some English sounds, such as "p" or the short "e" don't exist in Arabic. For example, when the brand Pepsi is written in Arabic, it literally comes out being pronounced Beebsi. Also, the K and the C like in cat become the same letter "Kaf" and the S and the C like in certain become the Arabic letter "Sa." Likewise, the Arabic letters Sa and Sod both become English S. There are many examples of such problematic translations.

Anyway, I explain all of this because my name has apparently caused everyone some confusion, because they see the "y" in Caryl and don't realize that its pronounced as the "o" in Carol. My first name, written in Arabic looks like this (remember to read from right to left):










My middle name Marie looks like this:









And my last name Tuma looks like this:











Apparently when you look at that in Arabic and translate it all back into English, it becomes Kareail Narey Toma. The lack of distinction between "m" and "n" is something that I don't really understand, because both letters do exist in Arabic, the mim and the noon. You can see in my middle name that the mim was translated to N, but they got it right in my last name. Unfortunately, the Qatari government did not get it right in my last name, and every single one of my government documents is issued to Caryl Marie Tuna. Grrrrrr.

And for those of you who actually speak Arabic... Yes I do know that my handwriting looks like a two-year old's. I've only been doing this for three months. When it comes to Arabic... I am a two year old!

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous3:10 AM

    Your name looks so cool in arabic!

    ReplyDelete
  2. i'm still impressed. also - i'm looking at new cars and the Jeep Liberty is one of them....can you tell me pros/cons of it? Do you like it? The other one I'm looking at is the Ford Escape.

    ReplyDelete
  3. At least they got most of your name right. I can't imagine what they would do with mine

    ReplyDelete