The comparison between Classical Arabic and the colloquial dialect appears to be a problem with manifold dimensions, and its discussions raise controversy that is not limited to the literary field, but extends to national identity and religious belief.
Accordingly, for decades, the Egyptian Ministry of Culture has paid attention to the cultural product transmitted in the classical language, especially with regard to printed publications. However, for the first time, it presented a novel in the colloquial dialect through one of its most important bodies, coinciding with the start of the activities of the 53rd session of the Cairo International Book Fair - which Launched on January 26 - the General Book Authority of the Egyptian Ministry of Culture released the novel "With the Kenyan Seal" by writer Sherine Hilal, which is a narrative text in the colloquial dialect.
I am honored to announce the release of
my first novel #
with the Kenyan seal
on
the
#Egyptian
General_Book_Authority
.
/QXQpBP1kpR
— Sherin Helal 𓈙𓂋𓇋𓇋𓈖𓁐 𓉔𓃭𓄿𓃭𓀀 (@sherinhelal555) January 25, 2022
The presentation of a novel in the colloquial dialect on the part of the Ministry of Culture is a late step compared to the long distances that private publishing houses have traveled on the path to abandoning the language of the Dhad under slogans carrying different purposes, but all of them unite behind the banner of facilitating the Egyptian reader who speaks the vernacular.
During the last ten years, publishing houses in the vernacular have diversified, including literary texts, human development and psychology books, and succeeded in finding a market for them, and even won prizes.
The Novel “Al-Waleeda” by Nadia Kamel, written in Egyptian vernacular, won the Sawiris Cultural Prize in its 14th session in 2019.
The tongue of the "stranger" is Egyptian
A few days before the start of the Cairo Book Fair, a great controversy arose within the Egyptian cultural community, after the House of Hen for Translation and Publishing announced the launch of a colloquial translation of the novel "The Stranger" by the famous French writer Albert Camus.
Of course, several translations were issued in the classical language for the novel "The Stranger", which paradoxically involves the hero's struggle over identity in its many forms, but the translator Hector Fahmy decided to present the French text in the language of the Egyptian street man.
The strangest thing about translating “Al-Gharib” into the vernacular dialect is what the “Kitab Khan” publishing and distribution house did about 5 years ago, claiming to discuss heritage in a modern way. It reprinted the “Risala of Forgiveness” by Abu Al-Ala Al-Ma’ari in colloquial Egyptian, and that translation was taken over by the writer Nariman Al-Shamli.
In more than one press interview, the translator who transferred "the stranger" to Egyptian defended the colloquial dialect or the "Egyptian language" as he calls it, considering it a language with aesthetic features that differ from classical Arabic.
The crisis - from Fahmy's point of view - lies in what he called "the dual language" of the Egyptians, noting that "no Egyptian speaks pure Standard Arabic, meaning that there are two languages, the first of which is pure Standard Arabic known to the people of the peninsula, and the other is an Egyptian language in which it is mixed. Pure Arabic is in hieroglyphic and Roman, and is not a language and dialect as some portray it.”
He added that "the young child naturally speaks Egyptian, while he learns Arabic, while the French child does not find anything new at school about the language he speaks with his parents at home."
Fahmy went too far with his vision of the Egyptian vernacular, as he expressed his astonishment at the fact that Standard Arabic is the official language in Egypt, "despite the strong presence and cultural influence of the Egyptian language for Egypt through drama, cinema and colloquial poetry," stressing that colloquial only needs a political decision to turn into an official language. for the country.
Comparison date
It is not a new thing for classical and colloquial to enter the field of comparison. Rather, the issue has reached in some historical periods what can be called the conflict between those who are biased towards the language of the anti-language and those who are loyal to the tongue of the street.
More than 150 years ago, Rifa'a al-Tahtawi - who is called the pioneer of modern enlightenment in Egypt - sided with writing colloquially in specific fields.
Al-Tahtawi said in his book “Anwar Tawfiq Al-Jalil Min Tawtheeq News of Bani Ismail” published in 1868, “The circulated language called the vernacular in which understanding occurs in current transactions, there is no objection to having rules close to the source and by which books of public utilities and municipal interests are classified.”
Although the call of the pioneer of modern enlightenment to use the vernacular was limited to governmental interests, his student, the talented Muhammad Othman Jalal - one of the pioneers of the Egyptian theater - extended that call to include his theater translated from French, to receive blatant criticism from the thinkers of his time to the extent of returning his use of the Egyptian dialect to his classical palaces, This is the same attack that Yaqoub Sanoua received after that when he used the vernacular in his theatrical texts during the second half of the 19th century.
With the fall of the Ottoman Caliphate in the early twentieth century and the consolidation of British colonialism in Egypt, the national movement entered the battle of Egyptian identity or nationalism against everything that is Ottoman and English, and the activity of that movement reached its peak after the Egyptian revolution in 1919.
Biased calls for the Egyptian identity extended to the language, demanding the Egyptianization of the cultural product. The Egyptianization movement was led by prominent writers, such as Ahmed Lotfi El-Sayed and Mahmoud Taymour, and this was followed by a strong presence of Egyptian colloquial poets, such as Bayram al-Tunisi.
By the sixties of the last century, colloquial poetry was feeling the arrival of its golden age by Najib Sorour, Abdul Rahman Al-Abnoudi, Salah Jahin, and after them Ahmed Fouad Najm and Sayed Hijab.
Literary flags against the vernacular
Throughout his literary career, the Nobel Prize-winning writer Naguib Mahfouz sided with the classical language and did not rely on the Egyptian dialect, even during dialogues between personalities who often belong to popular classes whose classical tongues do not tolerate.
In his book “Pages from Naguib Mahfouz’s Memoirs,” literary critic Raja al-Naqqash conveys the Nobel writer’s point of view on the adoption of classical without an alternative. colloquial, and a marine face with their dialect, and within the same country its inhabitants may not understand each other because of the different local dialects.
Mahfouz continues, explaining his relationship with Standard Arabic, "My adherence to the classical Arabic language is due to many reasons, including: it is a general, national, religious and non-fabricated language, but I had to give it a kind of life and work to bring it closer to people's minds, and stay away from the difficult words that abound in it in order for it to be valid. for literary use.
Of course, the writer, critic and translator, Taha Hussein, was one of the most important advocates of classical versus colloquial language, starting in his defense of the cause of Arab unity.
And the Dean of Arabic literature said - during a television interview with him during the sixties of the last century - that the classical language is the only way to achieve unity among Arab nations, adding, "If you write in Standard Arabic, all Arabs will understand you, and if you write in Egyptian colloquial, only the general Egyptians will understand you, and the same is the case." With the Iraqi and Moroccan dialects and other dialects.
He considered himself an opponent of colloquialism, but he did not refuse to use colloquial terms and expressions in writing as long as the need arises, and the need here - from Hussein's point of view - is that the classical is unable to perform the purpose desired by the writer or speaker.
From the point of view of the ease of language, the thinker Abbas Al-Akkad spoke in his book “Hours with Books” about the formal language as being easier to handle than writing in the local dialect, which he described as the language of the common people and the ignorant.
He added, "Whoever imagines otherwise, let him take a page that he writes in Standard Arabic, then try to translate it into the vernacular, and see which one is more difficult for him and more in need of accuracy and scrutiny and selection."
Regarding the ease of understanding, Al-Akkad explained, “Cairo colloquialism is rarely understood in its clarity in some villages of Upper Egypt, and Egyptian colloquialism is not understood in Tunisia and Iraq or in Yemen and Palestine. But you write the vernacular, so you need 20 translators who pass it on to your brothers in language and literature, and then they transfer it to dialects that differ in the circumstances of the meanings and comparisons of ideas, so you do not do what you want except with a bit of metamorphosis and alteration.
static language
The link between the Arabic language as a language of the Holy Qur’an prompted many conservatives to treat it as a sacred language, even though it is a living language, which led to the separation of many dialects from it as a natural result of its inertia, according to the vision of the director of “Safsafa” publishing and distribution house, Muhammad al-Baali.
Al-Baali added - in press statements - that there are fundamental differences between colloquial and formal, and that the lack of a categorical separation between them is due to the absence of a final authority, whether religious, political or cultural, "and therefore the two of them agreed to live adjacent lives, but they are independent," he said.
He stressed that writing in the vernacular has become a reality for novelists and poets who have an audience, stressing that the Egyptian dialect has proven its validity for narration a long time ago.
This acceptance of the vernacular prompted the director of Safsafa Publishing to translate the play "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by English writer William Shakespeare into the Egyptian vernacular under the name "A Dream in the Night of the Half-Summer Night".
Al-Baali pointed out that slang translation has not yet imposed itself in the publishing market, due to the publisher's fear of what he called "regionalism", as there are many dialects inside Egypt. He asked, "What slang should be chosen? Is it slang in Cairo or Upper Egypt?"
Ignorance and hypocrisy
The article "Translation into the Colloquial Between Ignorance and Deliberation" by the Egyptian writer Ahmed Al-Khamisy criticized the attempts to use the Egyptian dialect in translations.
Al-Khamisi attributed the call for authorship, writing and translation in the vernacular to what he described as an obscene mixture - intentional or resulting from ignorance - between the dialect that accompanies all classical languages and the languages themselves.
He went on to explain, "The language consists of a lexicon of words and a system of grammar, which is not available to the slang because the lexicon of its words is mostly eloquent Arabic, and because it does not have a system of rules despite the slight grammatical differences between classical and colloquial in the sign names and the collection of the verbs of Muthanna."
The Egyptian writer criticized the slogan of using the vernacular in order to facilitate the reader for being simpler than the classical, considering this to be a fraud practiced by the authors and translators who are biased towards the local dialects.
The article wondered about the fate of other Egyptian dialects other than Cairo (relative to the capital Cairo), which is currently adopted only in translations into colloquial, and added, “If they have the right to adopt the Cairene vernacular as their language, as they say, it is the right of the owners of other Egyptian dialects such as Saidia, Sinai Bedouins, Swahili, and Nuba people.
Al-Khamisi concluded his article with a pessimistic outlook in the event that dialects continue to be adopted in the literature, expecting the fragmentation of the easy classical language that unites the homeland, which means directly the fragmentation of the homeland itself by destroying its strongest foundations, which is the means of understanding and communication between citizens.