Arabic is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. It has more than 300 million speakers, is official in more than 20 countries and co-official in at least 6 others. It is considered one of the oldest languages, as well as being sacred to the Islamic world as the language in which the Qur’an is written. It uses its own writing system in which it writes from right to left and has an alphabet consisting of 28 letters in which there are no capital letters.

It is a macro-language belonging to the South Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic family and originates from the nomadic tribes of the Arabian Peninsula. Due to the way of life of its speakers, there was a great dispersion and growth of the language. This gave rise to the different dialect groups and varieties that exist today. However, the 7th century was a key period in the expansion of the language; due to the conquests they were able to reach North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula and eastern China.

In 1973, the United Nations General Assembly declared it the sixth official language of the organisation.

There are those who consider that Arabic is not a language as such, but rather the matrix from which many of its dialectal varieties which differ greatly from each other, emerge, and that the only recognised official language is the standard or classical Fusha. It is also considered by some to be a dead language, since it is only transmitted through literature and teaching.

THE DIGLOSSIA PHENOMENON

Standard Arabic is the official language in government, education, media and literature It is also used in university theses, in political debates, in the written press and in radio and television news. However, in social or other types of broadcasts, local Arabic is used. Today, the vast majority of the population understands and speaks Standard Arabic to a greater or lesser extent. The same goes for Egyptian Arabic, which, although it is an Eastern dialect with some features of North African Arabic, has spread throughout the Arab world thanks to songs, films and TV series.

As a result, diglossia occurs: a phenomenon that can be defined as the fact that the same language has two basic varieties that coexist in the same space, but are used in different contexts. This results in words and terms that can continually shift from the standard language to the local language and vice versa Expressions of both can sometimes be mixed.

Apart from these dialectal varieties, there are also languages such as Maltese, which is the official language in Malta alongside English and one of the official languages of the European Union. Although Maltese has developed as a distinct language for political and religious reasons, it is a Semitic language derived from Maghrebi Arabic, written in Latin characters and heavily influenced by Sicilian, English and other European languages.

ARABIC AND TRANSLATION

Arabic translation, apart from the large number of Arabic speakers around the world, is of great importance today when it comes to establishing business relations. Trade in the Arab world is continuously developing. They are mainly active in the energy market with the export of oil and natural gas.

Technological development and the increased use of the Internet for commercial or simply informational purposes has also opened up an important field for translation. The reason is that any web content has to be translated to facilitate its dissemination among Arabic speakers.

On the other hand, at the national level, translation is also of vital importance when establishing diplomatic relations with other countries. The same is true in the geopolitical and military sphere, where constant intercultural communication is necessary.