Arabic is a rich and sophisticated language that can evoke vivid
imagery and powerful emotions in the reader, but Arabized ads and collateral
material like brochures that were originally conceived and created in a
different language, typically English for multinational clients, tend to
struggle at replicating the same impact, meaning and personality. There are
culturally irrelevant reference points, topics, styles and all manner of
reasons why pure Arabization is simply a bad practice, but there is an inherent
challenge in the Arabic language, particularly when it comes to written copy.
Copywriting for ads in English is often described as “salesmanship
in print” where the copy, or at least the good ones are written to sound, in
the readers mind, like a person talking to you in real life. Beside
persuasiveness and using words and reference points that resonate with the
reader, the copy crafts the voice and tone of a brand to give it a human
quality.
In the case of Arabic there are unique challenges with the
duality of the language; a written (Modern Standard Arabic) and a spoken
language. Though headlines and snappy
slogans have more creative license, the body copy and any sentence or paragraph
must adhere to Modern Standard Arabic, which is never spoken except in
newscasts, official speeches and in courts. And here lies the biggest challenge
of writing copy in Arabic that is going to sound as convincing as someone talking
to you colloquially and embodying a personality and tone that brings a brand to
life.
Humour illustrates the problem quite nicely as most if not
all spoken jokes are said in colloquial and any attempts to write them down in
Standard Arabic will inevitably result in something being “lost in
translation”. This creates additional stress on the Arabic copywriter as humour
is one of the more effective advertising strategies.
Though Arabic copywriters do have unique opportunities in
using Classical Arabic and beautiful poetry in ads as reference points that
other languages would struggle to effectively use (think Chaucer for English),
it doesn’t help in creating the brand personality through “Arabization” because
if you knew someone who went around ONLY speaking in Classical Arabic you’d
think they were a bit odd.
Hebrew had a similar duality over a century ago where an
ancient written Hebrew co-existed with a spoken Hebrew with wide variations all
over the world that was influenced by many other languages, like in the case of
Yiddish in Germany. But the Zionists knew that to form a future state where
different Jews could live, work and prosper they would need to modernize and
unify the language and so over the course of two to three generations created
modern Hebrew; a written and spoken language. There have been many attempts to
formalize a colloquial written Arabic with limited success as well as outright
hostility to the idea. The most obvious problem is regional dialects and
vernacular making it impossible to agree on a standard spoken Arabic. The other
obstacle is the sacredness of classical Arabic and the need to preserve its
teaching and usage. Brands using Social Media to communicate seem to have
broken away from the rigid limitations of printed communication where
colloquial is written more frequently to fit in with the lingua franca of the
medium.
But I digress. Arabization of foreign concepts is still
happening at an alarming rate, particularly in the gulf where a large
percentage of foreign Creative heads at ad agencies are simply handing off
English concepts to be Arabized. Egypt is the one creative market that has
broken free of the Arabization trap and that is in part due to the strong
colloquial linguistic identity that exists there, which also happens to be the
only form of spoken Arabic that all Arabs can understand and relate to, along
with Lebanese but to a lesser extent.
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