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1. Post-edition at Unbabel

2. Grammar

2.1. Agreement

2.1.1. Tense, mood, aspect, person (for verbs)

2.1.2. Gender and number (determiners and adjectives)

2.1.3. Case (nouns and prepositions)

2.2. Determiners

2.3. Prepositions

2.4. Pronouns

2.5. Verbs

3. Orthography

3.1. Abbreviations

3.2. Apostrophes

3.3. Capitalization

3.4. Compounds

3.5. Diacritics

3.6. Foreign words

3.7. Language variety

3.8. Numerals

3.9. Symbols

4. Punctuation

4.1. How to use punctuation marks

4.2. Punctuation in greetings and closings

5. Register

5.1. Grammatical and Lexical Registers

5.2. Formal Register

5.3. Informal Register

6. Localization challenges

6.1. Proper nouns

6.1.1. Persons

6.1.2. Places

6.1.3. Organizations

6.1.4. Brands and products

6.1.5. Other entities

6.2. Acronyms and initials

6.3. Date format

6.4. Time format

6.5. Measures

6.6. Currency

7. Most frequent errors

8. Useful online resources

 

 

1. Customer instructions, which include the identification of the client and his requests to personalize the translation, such as the register that must be used to address the recipient of the message. Following these instructions is vital to deliver translations that match the client’s expectations.
2. Glossaries, which correspond to specific vocabulary and expressions used by the client, and that must be respected by the editors.
3. Translation Memories, which correspond to stored segments (expressions, sentences or paragraphs) that have previously been translated and accepted for customer usage. They are useful for ensuring consistency across translations.

• Nominative case (al-marfū‘ ٱلْمَرْفُوعُ) is indicated by one dhamma if a word is definite, and by two dhammas if the word is indefinite. So, it will end with a /đammah/ or /đammatain/, and is used in several situations:
• for the subject of a verbal sentence;
• for the subject and predicate of a non-verbal (equational) sentence, with some notable exceptions;
• for certain adverbs;
• For the citation form of words. 

• Accusative case (al-manṣūb ٱلْمَنْصُوب) will end with a /fatħah/ or /fatħatain/, and is used in several situations:
• the object of a transitive verb;
• most adverbs;
• Semi-prepositions;
• internal object/cognate accusative structure;
• the accusative of specification (al-tamyīz, ٱلتَّمْيِيزُ);
• the accusative of purpose (al-maf‘ūl li-ajlihi, ٱلْمَفْعُولُ لِأَجْلِهِ);
• the circumstantial accusative (al-ḥāl, ٱلْحَال);
• objects of (kam, كَمْ 'how much/how many');
• cardinal and ordinal numbers from 11, and 13-19;
• exclamation of astonishment (mā ajmalahā!, !مَا أَجْمَلَهَا 'Oh, how beautiful she is!');
• vocative first term of construct (yā ‘abd-a-llah! يَا عبدَ اللهِ ‘Oh, Abdallah!’);
• nouns following exceptive particles in non-negative sentences;
• the noun following the absolute, or categorical negation (lā, لَا ‘No’).

• Genitive case (al-majrūr, ٱلْمَجْرُورُ) will end with a /kasrah/ or /kasratain/ and is used in several situations:
• objects of prepositions;
• the second, third, fourth, etc. term of an iḍāfah (إِضَافَةٌ genitive construction);
• the object of a locative adverb;
• Elative (comparative/superlative) adjectives behave similarly (aṭwalu waladin, أَطْوَلُ وَلَدٍ 'tallest boy'). 

• The Annexing grammatical sign never takes the Nunation (Modulation) of any of the three kinds; in dual masculine case the letter nun - final - is always dropped. 

• Always indefinite i.e. has no ālif and lām letters in two cases:
• If the 2^nd noun i.e. Annexing is definite, the Annexed drops the definite letters, and Nunation (modulation) is dropped too. However, if there is an adjective it is parallel with the Annexed i.e. both are definite or both are indefinite.
• If the Annexed is dual or masculine plural, the letter nun - final - is dropped.

• A preposition (حَرْفُ الْجَرِّ- called /harf ul ĵarr/ in Arabic) is a single letter or a word which connects two nouns, or a verb and a noun, to form a sentence.
• It always precedes a word and never follows the word.
• It always comes before a noun and it does not come before a verb.
• The noun following a preposition is changed from nominative case to genitive case. This means that the last letter of the word will be changed from a /đammah/ or /đammatain/ to a /kasrah/ or /kasratain/.
• The noun followed by a preposition is called /Maĵrūr/ مَجْرُورٌ, which means that the preposition has caused a change in its case (from nominative to genitive case) as mentioned in the previous rule.
• When a preposition precedes an indefinite noun (e.g. ‘in a school’), the noun is affected in the same way.

• Subject pronouns -ضمائر الفاعل (Damaa'ir al-faa3il) - i.e. I, you, we, he, she, we, they - take the place of a noun and function as the subject of a sentence. In Arabic, the subject pronoun is frequently dropped. You can tell from a verb conjugation who the subject is, so it's not always necessary to use the subject pronoun in such cases, except for emphasis. However, in equational (verbless) sentences, like the two examples below, you do need the subject pronoun.

• أنتَ/أنتِ if you're addressing one person;
• أنتما if you're addressing two (in standard Arabic);
• أنتم/أنتن if you're addressing three or more people.

• Object pronouns - ضمائر المفعول به (Damaa'ir al-maf3uul bihi) - i.e. me, you, us, him, her, them - are used when you do something directly to someone or something else. In Arabic, these pronouns are suffixes that are attached to the verb:

• Connected personal /̛ād-dama̛ir/ /̛āl-mutasilah/ الضَمائِر المُتَصِلة / Description: preposition + connected personal (suffix) = one word

• Example of the Preposition /men/ من / NB: all prepositions can be attached to connected personal pronouns (Objective Case) 

• The annex compound - مركب إضافي, which is composed of an indefinite noun followed by a definite noun, or an indefinite noun or an invariant noun followed by an indefinite noun. 

• The attributive compound - مركب إسناد,ي, which is derived from a verbal sentence جملة فعلية or a nominal sentence جملة إسمية 

• The numerals compound - مركب عددي, which is composed from the eleventh to nineteenth (11-19). 

• Tashkil (marks used as phonetic guides)

• Harakat (short vowel marks)

• Fatḥah: the fatḥah ⟨فَتْحَة⟩ is a small diagonal line placed above a letter. The word fatḥah itself (فَتْحَة) means ‘opening’ and refers to the opening of the mouth when producing an /a/.

• Kasrah: a similar diagonal line below a letter is called a kasrah ⟨كَسْرَة⟩, and designates a short /i/.

• Ḍammah: the ḍammah ⟨ضَمَّة⟩ is a small curl-like diacritic placed above a letter to represent a short /u/. 

• Sukun: the sukūn ⟨سُكُون⟩ is a circle-shaped diacritic placed above a letter. It indicates that the consonant to which it is attached is not followed by a vowel.

• 1^st Class written-wise
• 1^st Group - Classical Written Arabic

• 2^nd Group - Modern Literary Written Arabic

• 3^rd Group - Modern Standard Written Arabic

• 2^nd Class spoken-wise
• 4^th Group - Modern Spoken Arabic Dialects (i.e. non-standard Spoken Arabic)

• 5^th Group - Arabic Slang (i.e. colloquial spoken Arabic / informal words and expressions)

• 11 and 12: both parts of the number should agree in gender with the specified element. 

• 13 to 19: the first part of the number should be of the opposite gender of the specified element, while the second part (عشر) should have the same gender. 

• All punctuation marks that come immediately after a word are written adjacent to it without any whitespace between the punctuation mark and the word preceding it.
• When writing inside brackets, the text is written immediately after the opening bracket, without whitespaces, and the closing bracket occurs immediately after the last word.

• Full stop (نقطة نهائية) is used at the end of declarative sentences.

• Question mark (؟) علامة استفهام) is used at the end of questions.

• Comma (،) is used between different clauses in compound sentences.

• Colon (:) نقطتان رأسيتان is used before lists, explanations, and direct quotations.

 

• Quotation marks (“ ”) علامتا التنصيص are used before and after a quotation.

• Semicolon (؛) الفاصلة المنقوطة) is used between two sentences, one of which denotes the reason for the other.

• Exclamation point (!) علامة الاستعجاب is placed at the end of sentences expressing internal emotions, such as joy, sadness, prayer, and surprise.

• Em dash (—) الشَرْطة: denotes a break in a sentence or to set off parenthetical statements.

• Slash (/) خط مائل is used to separate or compare different elements or multiple choices, and when writing the date.

• Brackets ( ) الأقواس. are used to insert explanations to a previous word or statement, or numbers located in the middle of speech. 

• business letters;
• letters of complaint;
• some essays;
• reports;
• official speeches;
• announcements;
• professional emails.

• personal e-mails;
• short notes;
• friendly letters;
• most blogs;
• diaries and journals. 

• symbols and abbreviations;
• acronyms;
• short sentences;
• first person, second person, and third person;
• passive and active voice.

Accuracy errors

• Overly literal translations and adherence to the source language, i.e. to translate the source expressions word by word and with the same syntax, which leads to confused text style. 
• Mistranslation of the meaning of the text, which implies that the translation conveys the wrong message. 

• Incorrectly identification of abbreviations or specific terminology.

• inconsistent use of key words or phrases throughout the document or across different documents that are part of the same body of work. Inconsistency can be confusing to readers, especially when the information is new to them.

 

Fluency errors 

• Dictation: compound words, movements, orthographic errors. 
• Punctuation errors related to the misuse of punctuation. It’s important to be aware that punctuation usage and rules vary in different languages, even when the punctuation marks look the same. Languages that are written from right to left (such as Arabic and Farsi) have adopted some punctuation marks from Western languages, but they are flipped laterally to suit the direction in which the language is written.
• Prepositions errors related to the difference between the English and Arabic languages and styles. 

• Verb time related to the difference between the English and Arabic languages.