Beginner - Levantine: Ends of the Earth

Dear Sierra and Elias,

As usual, your lesson was well-prepared and stimulating. Would the adverbial in the final sentence be acceptable in Modern Standard Arabic if “dunya” (ﺪﻨﻴﺎ) were to be substituted for “dineh” (ﺪﻨﻴﻪ)?

“At the ends of the earth” is not a very common expression in English. “The ends of the earth” is normally used alone (e.g. as a book title) or with a verb of movement (e.g. go to the ends of the earth, follow sb to the ends of the earth, pursue sb to the ends of the earth). Since the Arabic expression under discussion literally means “at the extremity of the world”, you probably opted for “at the ends of the earth” in order to render the structure of the Arabic expression more transparent.

There are several English expressions which would sound more natural in this context, e.g. “miles from anywhere”, “in the middle of nowhere” or “in the back of beyond”. There are also regional variants which are employed in the United States and in New Zealand.

The French equivalents are heavily context-dependent: “au diable”, “au diable vauvert”, “dans un trou perdu”, “dans un endroit perdu”, “dans un endroit complètement isolé”, “en pleine cambrousse”. “Au diable vauvert” is somewhat literary. “En pleine cambrousse”, which is colloquial, would fit the bill here.

In German you could say “jwd”. This abbreviation stands for “janz weit draußen”. In the first word “j” has been substituted for “g”. This shows that the expression originated in Berlin, where “g” is pronounced like “j”. (The German “g” sounds like the “g” in Engl. “go”, while the “j” in the affirmative particle "ja" is pronounced like the initial letter in Arab. ﻴﻜﻤﻞ (yukmil).

“Am Arsch der Welt” (literally “at the arse of the world”) is also widely used, but it is only appropriate in conversational exchanges between people who know each other well. You would not say this to a stranger who has stopped you in the street to ask you where the nearest DIY superstore is.

“Am Ende der Welt” (literally “at the end of the world”) is yet another current variant and is often used in newspaper articles. It could be employed in a polite conversation with a stranger.

Desmond, you make some very good points about the translation here. In this case, Elias and I opted for a more literal translation, but the meaning in English would probably have been something like "that's miles from here" or "that's really far away." In this case, we were not really suggesting that the hospital was in the middle of nowhere, only that it wasn't anywhere near where we were situated in the dialogue.

In MSA, the equivalent phrase would actually be quite different:

أقاصي الأرض

Thanks for writing in!

Dear Sierra,

Thank you for explaining the meaning of “bi-aakhir al-dineh” and providing a standard Arabic equivalent. Perhaps you’ll find an opportunity to use the standard expression in another podcast.

I think the most natural English equivalents of the Arabic sentence under discussion would be: “Oh dear, that hospital’s miles from here!” or “Oh dear, that hospital’s miles away!” You could also replace “hospital” by a pronoun and say “that’s miles from here!” In German I’d say “Das amerikanische Krankenhaus ist eine ganze Ecke weg von hier” or “Das amerikanische Krankenhaus ist eine ganze Ecke weit weg von hier”, and in French I’d say “Il vous reste un sacré bout de chemin jusqu’a l’hôpital américain” or “Ça fait un sacré bout de chemin jusqu’à l’hôpital américain”. You could also omit the explicit reference to the hospital and say “Das ist eine ganze Ecke weg von hier”, “Il vous reste un sacré bout de chemin à parcourir” or “Il vous reste un sacré bout de chemin à faire”. I could think of five or six other variants. It’s easy to find appropriate translation equivalents when you know a language well.

In the audio transcript there is a contradiction between the rare expression “at the ends of the earth” and the bracketed paraphrase “very far from here”. The first expression means that the hospital in the back of beyond, while the second one means that it is very far from the place where the two speakers have just met. I wasn’t sure what you meant and assumed that the hospital was somewhere on the outskirts of the city. The literal translation makes the structure of the Arabic phrase transparent but obscures its true meaning.

Yes, I think you're right, Desmond. It is tricky trying to decide what to write in the transcript, but, in retrospect, it would have been better to put: "...very far from here [lit. at the ends of the earth]."

Thanks again for your thoughtfulness.

Dear Sierra,

If you say “at the ends of the earth” you fall between two stools and risk confusing inexperienced language learners who naively imagine that there must always be exact correspondences between source and target texts. In order to preclude misunderstandings, I would make the free translation as free as possible and the literal translation as literal as possible. The free translation would be “that’s miles from here!”, while the literal translation would be “that hospital at the extremity of the earth”. The literal translation is very bad English (it sounds like Gaddafi’s incompetent spokesman!), but it makes the structure of the Arabic sentence entirely transparent and shows learners that the Arabic word for “extremity” is singular. I think you’ll probably agree with me if you listen to some of Ehab’s guests and look at some of the questions that have been asked about other podcasts.

Best wishes
Desmond