Comments on: You keep saying “modern”

By: Flatlander

Flatlander — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 16:01:24 +0000

I tend to agree, Zane. And most of the scientists are more likely to learn English than to translate to local language anyway. But I’m not sure most of the translations in any language would be technical documents, for that reason.

I am guessing more popular literature or political stuff gets translated.

I do agree with Lex’s general point, but I don’t think the statistic is a balanced indicator of anything.

By: Zane

Zane — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:39:42 +0000

Well, the Farsi market has taken a plummet in the past 25 years. Bahasa Malaya and its Indonesian equivalent used to be wide open for translation, but not so in recent years. Things are changing in those countries, thanks to Saudi oil money. However, since Malaysia was a former British colony, English is still commonly spoken and read. That fact alone has probably done more than anything to inhibit the Saudi inroads into Malaysia, although it remains an apartheid regime (they just do it nicely enough that you don’t notice it at first).

However, if you’re looking for scientifically inclined Muslims, you’re more likely to find them in Malaysia and Indonesia than pretty much anywhere else.

By: Flatlander

Flatlander — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 16:32:29 +0000

That certainly highlights the insularity of the Arabs, but of course the vast majority of Muslims are not Arabs.

It would be interesting to add in the number of Farsi or Malay or Indonesian translations.

By: lex

lex — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 14:55:46 +0000

I've always found this to be a rather telling statistic:

(The) total number of books translated into Arabic during the 1,000 years since the age of Caliph Al-Ma’moun [a ninth-century Arab ruler who was a patron of cultural interaction between Arab, Persian, and Greek scholars—WPR] to this day is less than those translated in Spain in one year.

By: Flatlander

Flatlander — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 14:36:57 +0000

I think historians agree that Islamic scholars were the most advanced on many topics a millenium ago. I don’t see any merit in diminishing those accomplishments today, any more than there is merit in exagerrating their current relevance. All peoples need to find examples of excellence and achievement in their histories. The article doesn’t surprise me, and I’ve heard exactly the same theme from North African taxi drivers in Europe more than once. I have also heard more than one Muslim political leader recently criticize their own culture for not putting enough emphasis on studying the sciences. My take on this is that there is a struggle going on within the culture between the religious schools and the modernists, who would rather emphasize scientific rather than religious education.

By: bobble

bobble — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 14:33:38 +0000

Upon linking to and reading the article, my first thought was that the “University of Columbia” is perhaps an educational institution lacking formal accreditation. However, further googling reveals that -

“George Saliba earned two degrees from the American University of Beirut: a B.S. in mathematics, in 1963, and an M.A. in education, in 1965. He earned two more degrees from the University of California, Berkeley: an M.S. in Semitic languages, in 1970, and a Ph.D. in Islamic sciences, in 1974.

After becoming a visiting professor at New York University and Columbia University, Saliba joined the faculty at Columbia in 1979, where he has become Professor of Arabic and Islamic Science. Saliba has been the recipient of numerous awards, fellowships and honors. He was elected Fellow of the National Humanities Center, 1997-1998, and he won the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Science Prize for Arabic/Islamic Heritage – Astronomy, in 1996. ”

Not having a transcript of Professor Salida’s presentation in hand, it may well be that the reporter who filed the newspaper report and/or the editor who reviewed and approved the submittal skewed the Professor’s presentation to reflect the prevalent Pakistani ‘weltanschauung’.

Just a thought.