Yamen Salkini | The underlying pearl | TEDxMimasStreet

"The degradation of nations is in the degradation of their tongue, and the downfall of their language will always become their own." This is the proverb which gave the inspiration to Yamen Salkini to take more responsibility against his native language "Arabic". Yamen sees that as he loves Arabic and has a good knowledge in English, so why not to translate? He invites people with language skills to play a role in supporting the Arabic scientific content all over the internet and books as he speaks about some previous problems he faced in his previous college study period.
Yamen Salkini is a pharmacist graduated from Al-Baath University, Homs. He's enthusiastic and active in the Syrian Society for Scientific Research organization, as well as many other freelance translations he had experienced.

Yamen believes in the power of change, and his sails are ready to make a good use out of any force of wind. He is a pharmacist, a volunteer and a translator with a holy appreciation for his mother tongue. Yamen Salkini aims to make a change in the community, however and wherever he can. He believes that volunteering is a word summarizes a lot of personal characteristics such as community responsibility, charity, cooperation, teamwork and self-confidence. He started his voluntary work at Al Birr association in 2006 and now he is the CEO of one of Al-Birr main committees. He likes chemistry and analysis so he specialized in laboratory analysis. Yamen is a translator since 2010 and he dedicates his efforts to translate medical books and articles from English to Arabic and has translated more than 100 articles and about 10 videoed lectures.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

ALRAFEE (an Arabic author) says:

"The degradation of nations
is in the degradation of their tongue,

and the downfall of their language
will always become their own.

That's when the foreigner colonizer
imposes his tongue

on the colonized nation,

shows off his majesty

and chases them with it.

He then sentences three judges
with one action:

The first one is:

imprisoning their language into his,
indicted to a lifetime behind bars.

The second: convicting their past
to be killed by oblivion.

And the third: chaining their future
to the cuffs he makes,

and his authority to be the leash
by which they’re bound."

(Applause)

The story started 8 years ago,

I was at my third year in college,

and I was asked to make a research
about a certain disease.

I asked for help from my elder friend
in the university.

He gave me books and articles and told me:

"If you want further information
go and search on the Internet,

but I don't recommend you search in Arabic
because you won’t find anything,

search only in English."

Why only in English?!

couldn't I find anything in Arabic?!

it's an old disease,
and it must have some articles in Arabic

just as in English!

I came back home and started searching

I truly didn't find anything more
than a few Arabic scripts in forums.

so I had to search in English, translate
and then present the essay I wrote.

next day, I kept thinking about that

maybe this particular disease doesn't have
much information about it in Arabic

thus I should search all over again

I searched with Google

and found that the first results you get
when you do a scientific research

is Wikipedia

when I entered it, I felt like
I've found what I was looking for

Wikipedia is a website
that contains 295 languages

the main page has 10 principal languages
including Arabic

which means they acknowledge Arabic
as a powerful and universal language

I looked at the written details
under each language,

and found that there are about
500,000 articles written in Arabic

In English, there is 5437962 articles.

- Don't check the number on the screen
as I can't memorize it -

(Applause)

I told myself:"It's not about the quantity

the quality is much important"

when you check any of these articles,

you'll find that there are articles
in English equal nearly to 40 pages

while they don't exceed
3 to 4 lines in Arabic.

It’s okay

why wouldn't I start to
do something about it?

So I really took the calculator

to calculate the time
I need to translate them

because I love typing on the computer
to compensate for my illegible font

and I love Arabic and have
a good knowledge of English

so I started using my calculator,

I found that if I want
to translate all these articles

then I wouldn't need more than 900 years.

900 years!

regardless of which grandchildren level
I would have by then,

those 5 million wouldn't stay the same,
they may become 200 million

and eventually,
we'll have 5 million articles in Arabic

So I asked myself: "Why bother myself?"

I don't even understand economics,
engineering, maths, etc.!

I would work on
what's related to my specialty

I would translate what involves
medicine and pharmacy.

So I recalculated and found out
that I need about 80 years.

80 years in front of a computer all day
with the possibility of having backache

or having to wear glasses like I do now

I tried to rethink about it, why's that?

why isn't there any consideration
given to Arabic?

Why do we believe that English is
the essential language for all sciences?

when I went back in time a little bit,

I found that in the Abbasid Era,

translation process was so active

During that time, Arabs translated
every book that got to their hands

articles, researches, myths, novels... etc

regardless of the content
whether it's right or wrong,

they translated them anyway.

They translated them
so they can discuss them, build on them

or criticize them.

This might be a part of our problem.

Today, any undergraduate student
who wants to do some research

then he needs to look
for information resources.

Unfortunately,
they are available only in English

thus he needs to learn another language

and it takes a lot of time

regardless of that, the human being
can't understand

what's written in a foreign language
as his native language.

Even if anyone works in this field

eventually, articles and researches

are published originally in English
and are maintained in that language

and we can't find them in Arabic.

Honestly, we need to work on turning
this international scientific content

from English to other languages

just like Germans turning it into German,
Japanese turning it to their language,

and like -

Can anyone read
what's written on the screen?

Alright.

Does anyone understand this language?

Did it run across anyone of you?

This is called the "Cebuano".

It’s a language spoken
by a group of about 20 million people

who live in the far east in Philippines.

Still, on Wikipedia
there are, in this language,

4 million articles, and it's the second
language in publishing after English.

So is it possible that we don't have
the qualifications and ability

to support publishing Arabic content?!

I told myself: "I have to
start within myself

and do something to support this idea".

Why don't we launch a scheme?

And I started contacting my friends
in college and Facebook groups

and we started to work on translating.

When we started, we actually faced
a fundamental challenge -

in a group of Syrians, Egyptians
and Moroccans

there was a disagreement
about translating some terms.

What should we translate "bacteria"?

should we keep it "bacteria"
or translate it to "germs"?

Or to "living organisms"?

And what should we translate
for example "metabolism"?

There are two synonyms in Arabic.

Is it possible that Arabic language
couldn't help us create new terms?

When the English needed new terms,

their language did not help them.

So they came up with two things:

Firstly, they used Latin

because derivation is easier in Latin
than English.

Secondly, they relied on abbreviations

to create new soft words.

What do you feel if I told you there is
a disease spreading around the world

infecting 35 million people

and causing death to about
2 million every year.

And that I liked to name this disease
"helps disease"?

Or to name the causing virus "FNMB"?

As an example,

it may seem a little weird.

Maybe some of us laughed.

I don’t know whether English people
are laughing now or not,

but until today they use the word "AIDS"

which is the acronym for
"Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome"

and "AIDS" in English
means "material assistance".

They didn't find any problem
using that word

in another field than it supposed to be
to refer to something else

while we find that shaky

and we don't like it,

maybe we should strongly believe

that the qualifications our language has

make it one of the most powerful
languages in the world.

So we actually need
a certified reference -

By the way,
in France "AIDS" is called "SIDA"

because words' order changes there.

We need a certified reference

so translators or researchers can refer to
when using terms in Arabic.

In fact, a book was made
called the Unified Medical Dictionary

and I don’t know if there are any other
similar thesauruses in other fields,

like economics and other fields

but they didn't spread that much,

Maybe because we don't believe
that we can use these Arabic words.

We need support to publish
these information and researches

whether they're new researches
or translated from other languages.

And we shouldn't underestimate the need
to have this content in Arabic

because it will save time and effort
for many researchers.

We need efforts which may be provided
by associations or organizations

but it has to start
from ourselves initially

because ...

efforts we make
will do a lot to reduce that gap.

Eventually, I'd like to remind you

that if anyone wants to translate
these articles all by himself

then he will need - as long as he's
on his own - at least 80 years

and he lost 15 minutes
while attending this talk.

(Applause)