Lower Intermediate - The middleman

Hello guys!

Another fantastic lesson, I thought I recently posted this questino but maybe my browser erred.

Also, I have been exuberantly busy as of late, so will try to work on a good dialogue for you all to check soon! Thanks!

But here's my question, I've come across this word in Arabic which I cannot find the historical or cultural precedence for.. usually foreign European names or foreign words have some origin, but I nor my Arabic speaking colleagues can figure this out.. So I came to the Arabic Experts! So here it is... Why is the Word for Austria or Austrian in the Arabic language:
النمسا او نمساوي

It just seems odd to us. The closest meaning is "Secret Holder?" But why is Austria called this? Something to do with Austria-Hungary Empire? Great War? Anyway a bit of Arabic Trivia!

Thanks again

Tomes

Hi,
I really enjoyed this lesson; a great mix of useful vocabulary, grammar and cultural information, all in under 15 minutes!
I like the way you give examples of using words in other contexts,eg "looking for a book".... أبحث عن كتب

i am iranaian and we have a lot in common in regard with both culture and language with arab world. i found your lessons very useful and continue your good efforts on introdusing this nice language to the world. شکرا

Tomes.. أهلاً بك
The word النمسا is not an Arabic word.. If you type (النمسا) in google,you'll find wikipedia explaining that the word is coming through Russian language to Arabic (немецкий نْيَامْيَاتْسْكِيْ).. So it is not us who called it النمسا
:)

Wow, never would have thought! I figured it was a foreign word! Thanks!

Mohamed has kindly invited me to post a few comments on this website. This comment concerns the enquiry about the etymology of the Arabic word for Austria. I can confirm that "al-namsa" (pronounced "an-namsa") comes from Russian. If you consult a Russian dictionary, you'll discover that the Russian word for "dumb" is "nemoee". (I've used a transliteration since I haven't got a Russian keyboard.) The Russians described the Germans and Austrians as "dumb" or "speechless" because most of the people who lived in the German-speaking part of Europe were unfamiliar with Slavic languages. This kind of etymological information is useful since it helps language students to memorise new words.

The word "waasta" (sometimes transliterated as "wasta") is so interesting that I could write an essay about it. The English version of Wikipedia contains a brief but highly informative article about "waasta", and an article entitled "The wonders of wasta" was published in "Aqoul" on 9 July 2005. The term can also be found on a webpage entitled "Arabic government and politics vocabulary". If you have difficulty in finding the page you can simply key in "hukuuma government" and run a Google search.

Judging by the Wikipedia article and the article in "Aqoul", "waasta" is an abstract term meaning "influence" or "clout", but "waasta" is a special kind of influence since the term in question is invariably used whenever people are talking about corrupt practices. Native speakers of English will naturally assume that "waasta" has no plural, for "clout" and "influence" are not used in the plural when they refer to the circumvention of rules and regulations. In Arabic, however, "waasta" can be used in the plural, and the plural occurs in this podcast.

"Waasta" is not always easy to translate, but a good translator will always find a way to resolve the problems posed by this kind of lexical item. If "waasta" is used in the singular, it can be rendered in English as "connections", "clout" or "influential friends". In French the best equivalent is "relations" (always plural in this sense), and in German you can say "Beziehungen" (always plural in this sense) or "Vitamin B". "Vitamin B" is a humorous variant. "B" refers to the first letter of "Beziehungen". People will say "Wer weiterkommen will braucht Vitamin B." If I wanted to translate "lasim waasta" into good idiomatic English, I'd say "You need connections / You need clout / You've got to have connections / You've got to have clout." As the French say, "on n'a que l'embarras du choix." I wouldn't use "middleman" because "middleman" doesn't have the negative connotations that are attached to "waasta" (cf. the examples in the "Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary").

The plural of "waasta" is much more difficult. What on earth can we do with a sentence like "al-balad kulluh waastat"? Since a literal translation would sound extremely odd and might even be incomprehensible, I'd suggest a very free rendering such as "The country is riddled with corruption", "The country is rife with corruption" or "In this country you can't get anything done without connections." If you put these equivalents in inverted commas and run a few Google searches you'll find that all these expressions are perfectly idiomatic. They render the meaning of the Arabic sentence correctly and they'll be understood by any native speaker of English.

Words, like people, generally belong to families, and some families are more interesting than others. The "waasta" family, in my opinion, merits particularly close attention. The Wikipedia article on "wasta" contains a reference to the noun "wasiit", and the PDF transcript contains a third noun belonging to the same family: "waasetah". Both "wasiit" and "waasetah" denote a person who acts as an intermediary in order to help someone to circumvent regulations, get out of a fine, obtain a sinecure, etc. Unfortunately, there is no English word for this kind of person. As I have already pointed out, "middleman" will not do here because it lacks the negative connotations attached to the Arabic terms in question. In order to render such words in English, we have no choice but to use vague euphemistic expressions whose meaning will be apparent from the context in which they are embedded. Someone who is looking for a "waasetah" might contact a friend and explain his difficulties before making a tentative enquiry such as "Do you know anyone who might be able to help?"

So much for the problems faced by someone who has to translate from Arabic to English. But what about people who have to translate in the opposite direction?

If a competent native speaker of Arabic is confronted with a sentence such as "Do you know anyone who might be able to help", he will examine the context in order to find out what the speaker really means. Once he realises that the speaker is trying to circumvent regulations, he will probably think of the word "waasetah" and substitute this noun for the word group "anyone who might be able to help".

However, if the translator is not a native speaker of Arabic, he may not be aware that there is an Arabic word that might be used to render the euphemistic English word-group in question, and he will probably translate more or less word for word, thereby producing a sentence which sounds like translationese.

How can such people be helped? Or how can such people help themselves? They will have to immerse themselves in Arabic culture until they can think and write like native speakers. This is likely to be a long and difficult process, but learners might be assisted by reference works in which words and phrases are arranged in conceptual fields. Such works have already been produced by European linguists. A typical example is provided by the "Longman Language Activator". A conceptual dictionary for students of Arabic should contain a chapter devoted to corruption. A translator looking for a word like "waasetah" could skim through this chapter and discover the term that would naturally suggest itself to a competent native speaker of Arabic.

A conventional electronic data base might be linked to one in which words and phrases are arranged in conceptual fields. That would be a marvellous resource for students of Arabic or any other major world language.

Just a brief comment on "ma'qool". This is a fairly common word meaning "intelligible", "understandable", "reasonable" or "rational". There's a song by Muhammed Hamaqi entitled "Mish ma'qool". In the present instance the adjective "ma'qool" is used as an exclamation expressing incredulity. I think it might be rendered idiomatically as "Surely you can't be serious!" or "You must be kidding!"

PDF Transcript for this lesson DOES NOT EXIST.

@ abharykg, The PDF transcript should be ok now. Although we upload and test everything afterwards, some files get lost on the servers over time. All our files are hosted with an external company.

For similar issues in the future, please email contact@arabicpod.net

Nice lesson, as always. I had a question though about this "wa" that appears in the sentence:

منذ متى و انت هنا؟

A literal English translation would be "since when and you are here?" But I've seen different examples of this "wa" being used in such cases and am trying to understand why and when this is used, and what exactly does it mean in this position?

Fixer, mentioned during the lesson for واسطة sounds like the closest in English, although it is connected with nepotism, 'old boys' networks', bribery etc. It's certainly a great curse of some countries like Egypt where police were recruited in this way, including bribes. Not only is it unfair to aspiring applicants but it means that many people aren't very suitable/skilled for the jobs they've 'bought'. In Nepal, politicians considered election to be an opportunity to make money from themselves, family & friends. Britain isn't entirely immune from this kind of corruption, although it is much more difficult and less widespread.

The dialogue could continue:

على أي حال, قدمت لشركة ثانية الأسبوع الماضي... ما أعرف اذا نجحت ولا لا

"Anyway, I applied to another company last week. I don't know whether I succeeded or not."