i've been banging my head against the wall trying to translate this article all week. i feel like reagan is tormenting me from beyond the grave. the translation is painfully slow. i simply didn't have much of the critical vocabulary--words like "shayuu'iya" ("communism") somehow never came up on the vocab lists of my text books. printed out, the article is 3 and a half pages long. that doesn't seem like much but i've only gotten through the first page and it took me hours.
many of those hours were spent sitting in a cafe because they tend to be air conditioned and most of my apartment is not. whenever i do arabic homework in a public place, the arabs come out of the woodwork. they're always extremely nice and very happy to see someone trying to learn their language. sometimes they even offer to do my homework for me. yesterday this syrian guy offered to help me with my translation. it was tempting, but i had to tell him it's better for me to do it myself. the goal is to learn this damn language, not learn reagan's biography.
the problem is not the arabs i meet, i generally enjoy the opportunity to practice with them, it's the crazy anglos. they also come out of the woodwork. one time i was working on arabic on the train home and this woman sitting next to me started talking about welsh. somehow, she thought because i was studying a foreign language, i would know all languages (i don't even know arabic!) she then asked me a slew of questions about the differences between welsh and arabic, none of which i could answer because i know nothing about welsh except whatever stuck in my brain from reading the black cauldron 2 decades ago. it really didn't matter how many times i explained that i didn't know anything about welsh, she just kept asking.
okay, i'm done. it was nice to get that off my chest. i'm off to meet my tutor.
