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25th translation contest: "Alien first impressions" » English to Arabic

Competition in this pair is now closed, and the winning entry has been announced.

Discussion and feedback about the competition in this language pair may now be provided by visiting the "Discussion & feedback" page for this pair. Entries may also be individually discussed by clicking the "Discuss" link next to any listed entry.

Source text in English

Imagine dining in a European capital where you do not know the local language. The waiter speaks little English, but by hook or by crook you manage to order something on the menu that you recognise, eat and pay for. Now picture instead that, after a hike goes wrong, you emerge, starving, in an Amazonian village. The people there have no idea what to make of you. You mime chewing sounds, which they mistake for your primitive tongue. When you raise your hands to signify surrender, they think you are launching an attack.

Communicating without a shared context is hard. For example, radioactive sites must be left undisturbed for tens of thousands of years; yet, given that the English of just 1,000 years ago is now unintelligible to most of its modern speakers, agencies have struggled to create warnings to accompany nuclear waste. Committees responsible for doing so have come up with everything from towering concrete spikes, to Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”, to plants genetically modified to turn an alarming blue. None is guaranteed to be future-proof.

Some of the same people who worked on these waste-site messages have also been part of an even bigger challenge: communicating with extraterrestrial life. This is the subject of “Extraterrestrial Languages”, a new book by Daniel Oberhaus, a journalist at Wired.

Nothing is known about how extraterrestrials might take in information. A pair of plaques sent in the early 1970s with Pioneer 10 and 11, two spacecraft, show nude human beings and a rough map to find Earth—rudimentary stuff, but even that assumes aliens can see. Since such craft have no more than an infinitesimal chance of being found, radio broadcasts from Earth, travelling at the speed of light, are more likely to make contact. But just as a terrestrial radio must be tuned to the right frequency, so must the interstellar kind. How would aliens happen upon the correct one? The Pioneer plaque gives a hint in the form of a basic diagram of a hydrogen atom, the magnetic polarity of which flips at regular intervals, with a frequency of 1,420MHz. Since hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, the hope is that this sketch might act as a sort of telephone number.

The winning entry has been announced in this pair.

There were 9 entries submitted in this pair during the submission phase, 7 of which were selected by peers to advance to the finals round. The winning entry was determined based on finals round voting by peers.

Competition in this pair is now closed.


Entries (9 total; 7 finalists) Expand all entries

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Language variants:
Entry #31666 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Egyptian
Winner
Voting points1st2nd3rd
347 x42 x22 x1
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry3.363.43 (7 ratings)3.29 (7 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • 2 users entered 2 "like" tags
فالمواقع المُشعة يتعين هجرها فلا تطؤها قدم لعشرات الآلاف من السنين؛
Flows well
Very Arabi​c with Art​ in it
Shams Daroueesh
ولكن كيف يتأتى التعبير عن ذلك المعنى تعبيرًا يؤدي وظيفته لعشرات الآلاف من السنين والإنجليزية التي كانت تتداولها الألسن وتخطها الأقلام قبل ألف عام
Flows well
Sumayah Alswayan
Entry #31142 — Discuss 1 — Variant: Standard-Arabian (MSA)
Emad Taha
Emad Taha
United Arab Emirates
Finalist
Voting points1st2nd3rd
326 x43 x22 x1
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry3.323.50 (8 ratings)3.14 (7 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • 2 users entered 3 "like" tags
  • 2 users agreed with "likes" (2 total agrees)
  • 1 user disagreed with "likes" (1 total disagree)
-1
+1
2
حيث
Flows well
May Kahla
+1
1
التي تفتقر إلى سياق مشترك
Flows well
jehd mahdi
لقد انخرط بعض من هؤلاء الأشخاص
Flows well
jehd mahdi
Entry #31375 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
Finalist
Voting points1st2nd3rd
297 x401 x1
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry3.103.30 (10 ratings)2.89 (9 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags
Entry #31615 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Standard-Arabian (MSA)
jehd mahdi
jehd mahdi
Ireland
Finalist
Voting points1st2nd3rd
162 x43 x22 x1
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry2.672.67 (9 ratings)2.67 (9 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags
Entry #31108 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Standard-Arabian (MSA)
S.J
S.J
Canada
Finalist
Voting points1st2nd3rd
121 x43 x22 x1
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry2.842.67 (6 ratings)3.00 (6 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • 1 user entered 1 "like" tag
ثم أخذت تلك النزهة منحى خاطئًا
Flows well
jehd mahdi
Entry #31172 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Standard-Arabian (MSA)
Finalist
Voting points1st2nd3rd
102 x41 x20
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry2.722.57 (7 ratings)2.86 (7 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags
Entry #30811 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
Finalist
Voting points1st2nd3rd
401 x22 x1
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry2.752.67 (6 ratings)2.83 (6 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags


Non-finalist entries

The following entries were not selected by peers to advance to finals-round voting.

Entry #30623 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Standard-Arabian (MSA)
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry2.552.50 (6 ratings)2.60 (5 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags
Entry #31186 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Standard-Arabian (MSA)
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry1.951.90 (10 ratings)2.00 (8 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags