From Renaissance to the Digital Age:

 

The Arabic language, with all its vast, rich history, has frequently been a subject of concern among intellectuals and linguists throughout recent years. The language has experienced significant development over the past century and a half and remains one of the most widely spoken languages, the official language of over 20 countries, and used by over 400 million speakers. Despite this, articles emerge every other year worrying about its development.

 

Historically, translation has played a pivotal role in the expansion of the Arabic language, ushering in the Arab modernist renaissance. In an interview with Al Jazeera, Dr. Mariana Massa, a researcher at the Catholic University of Milan and an expert in Arabic language and literature, touches on the decisive role that translation holds for the future of the Arabic language. Massa has studied the effect of translation of 13 languages. Her interview with Ali al-Kafrawi, “How Did Translation Liberate the Arabic Language from the Caves of the Past and Lead It into Modernity?”* explores how French translation during the 19th century contributed to the modernization of Arabic and how translation in the modern age can continue its growth.

 

According to Massa, a language is considered ‘dead’ when it is abandoned by its speakers or replaced by another language. In many cases, translation has contributed to the deaths of languages. Latin, for example, though once widely used, gradually fell into disuse in Europe due to the necessity of a language that illiterate commoners could understand when reading religious texts. Vernacular languages sprang up in Germany, England, and France to fill this need, with translated texts becoming more widely used before ultimately replacing Latin as the primary language of each region. In Egypt, to better serve administrative functions, Arabic replaced Coptic, which was once the spoken and written language of Egyptians. Today, Coptic survives only in liturgical contexts, writes Massa. She explains that both Coptic and Greek were translated into Arabic to streamline administrative roles, and later, Arabic was replaced by Ottoman Turkish to establish Turkish national identity.

 

Translation contributes to renewal and rebirth in a language’s lifecycle and the broadening of knowledge just as much as it can spell its end. It served key roles in the revival of modern Hebrew. Jewish scholars, through translation, studied and modeled the Arabic system of word derivation to create new terms for modern life, effectively resurrecting the language, states Massa. By translating knowledge from Latin, Greek, and Persian, the Arabic language contributed to both the European Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution. Translation has always opened passageways of knowledge, allowing language to adapt according to the many differing needs of the times.

 

Massa’s studies focus on the impact of French translation on Arabic. French translation laid the foundations for modernization, introducing both stylistic and social shifts in literature. French influence enriched the Arabic language linguistically and intellectually, aiding in its evolution and liberation from “centuries-old shackles,” in the words of Massa. In her research of early 19th-century works, she finds that French helped expand the Arabic lexicon; modern Arabic writing began to include more phrases taken from the French that didn’t have Arabic equivalents. She lists examples of some expressions which appeared in the writing and journalism of the time, derived from French: “given,” “at the same time,” “at least,” “rather,” “in the capacity of,” and “under the patronage of.”

 

Massa also studied the French influence on the changes in Arabic sentence structures. Numerous Arab intellectuals have been influenced by French culture and language, among them Ali Pasha Mubarak, Salih Majdi, and Qasim Amin. Massa uses “corpus linguistics,” a method of linguistic study that uses a ‘text corpus,’ a dataset of digital or digitized language resources.

 

Additionally, the Arabic language experienced modernization through the increased use of the present and future tenses in writing, which were introduced through the rise of journalism and French translations. Massa writes, “Present and future tenses gained prominence. The focus shifted from past to present and future topics previously absent from Arabic discourse.”

 

Despite the language panics surrounding Arabic on the danger of disappearing, Massa believes the language is not at risk of dying. Arabic has undergone constant expansion in the past 150 years alone and, with the aid of modern translation tools, has the potential to continue its development into the modern era. However, some obstacles must be addressed first. 

 

Arabic once dominated the world for centuries during the Abbasid era, serving as the language of science and knowledge, writes Ali al-Kafrawi in the introduction of the interview. However, this is less the case today, as scientific output in Arabic is limited currently, an indicator of the language’s stagnancy. Massa cites a 2008 study that finds that Arabic scientific production makes up less than 1% globally. Investing in scientific research is vital to elevating the Arabic language, as evidenced by the 19th-century Arab renaissance, when interest in the sciences reached its peak. In the present day, however, Arabic language education is lacking. Massa questions why Arabs don’t write or learn in Arabic out of pride for their language.

 

If translation has helped further the development of the Arabic language, what is holding it back from further modernization? According to Massa, current digitization software lacks the accuracy and nuance to effectively translate Arabic into other languages. Currently, no software or database can reliably interpret diacritics based on context, she writes.

 

AI technology has the potential to further the Arabic language, but not in its current state. Massa explains that the AI tools used at present are primarily trained on English models and are English-centric. As such, Arabic outputs “often lack eloquence and fluency.” To effectively serve the Arabic language, AI must be trained on classical Arabic texts, with input from linguists and technologists, to eventually produce natural-sounding Arabic results. With such tools more widely available, Arabic has the potential to adapt to changing times and continue as a language of tomorrow.