What do you call the iPad in Arabic? What do you call the iPad in Arabic? Sorry, can't help you there, but then neither can Google Translate, which transliterates whatever the iPad is called in Arabic into the English "Aye Bad". As mistranslations (of this BBC report) go, this is particularly serendipitous, confirming, at a nadir between the two companies, that …
Loanwords are foreign words embedded in a language with only the spelling and/or pronunciation adjusted, like, say, bungalow. But none of the fruit you cite come directly from the Arabic. Apricot and lime are--at a stretch--loaned, loan words, but orange has a far richer etymology, and the pedant in me wouldn't describe any of them as loanwords, except for the purpose of snappy journalism--
Oh, I see. Carry on as you were...
But it's not bad grammar, for example it's not bad grammar to say a verb is a noun, but it would be bad grammar to use a verb as a noun, in other words saying Orange is a loanword is not bad grammar (it's just wrong), but using Orange as a loanword would however be bad grammar.
Not sure whether the writer knows arabic or not, but in arabic, there is no letter that could make the "P" sound so for foreign products that use the letter P, they will replace it with "B" (the closest pronunciation of the P sound that they could come up with). As an example, in the arab world, people call PEPSI as "BEBSI". So for "iPad" case, for the non-english speaking arabs, they will pronounce it as iBad (or Aye Bad). Not really google's fault IMHO. Also, since google relies on the masses to provide better translations for its translation service, the translation for the word Apple, (the arabic text is pronounced as "Able"), has been fixed to "Apple". Since "iPad" was newly created by Apple, nobody had suggested a better translation of it from arabic to english so google is just pronouncing the word the way it was written in arabic.
Rarely a good idea. Google's translator did it here because it couldn't find a relevant word. But in this case, the BBC did it first (from English to Arabic in the original report). Now the real question is, did the BBC get the Arabic name from Apple, from another source (perhaps their own (or Google's again) automatic translator), or did they make it up on their own?
The word Apricot does originally come from Latin praecocia (because it ripened early in the year).
But this was borrowed by the Arabs as al-barqūq which then came back into Spanish (during the Arab occupation) as albaricoque, which became abercoc in Catalan, which became abricot in French. Which is where we get apricot from.
So, yes. And, indeed, no.
Blimey they have a problem dont they.
God bothers the world over are in a quandry.
First the Jesus Computer
Then the Jesus Phone
Now the Jesus pad
Oh yeah cant use that word without causing problems perhaps Prophet erm no well it looks like we will have to just call it a big PDA or perhaps a netbook without the keyboard. Not that it matters fanboys will buy it in droves bless em!
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
