Talk:Nizar Qabbani

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.	Biography Portal
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's quality scale. [FAQ] Please rate the article and, if you wish, leave comments here regarding your assessment or the strengths and weaknesses of the article.

	Syria Portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Syria, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to articles on Syria on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
B	This article has been rated as B-Class on the Project's quality scale.
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the Project's importance scale.
	After rating the article, please provide a short summary on the article's ratings summary page to explain your ratings and/or identify the strengths and weaknesses.

Translation issues

I see that a native Arabic speaker has changed the translation of the title's of Qabbani's first book of poetry قالت لي السمراء as "The Tanned Woman Told Me." I would like to respectfully argue for the translation to be changed back to "The Dark-Skinned Woman..." or perhaps "The Brown-Skinned Woman..." I was under the impression that سمراء applies to a woman (in this case) whose skin is naturally brown, not browned by exposure to the sun. On the other hand, to me the word "tanned" in English sounds more like someone whose skin is darker than it would normally be due to natural or artificial exposure to the sun. As a translator I just feel that the aforementioned suggested translations work better. Please forgive me if I am misinformed.--Jrastro 02:24, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

i can understand wanting a more p.c. wording such as tanned, but i agree. tanned seems less accurate. --User:Yung Wei ^綪永徽 02:28, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I am not a native English speaker, and my weekest point is vocabulary. I thought tanned would be a better expression than a hyphenated word. Now I looked it up in a dictionary and it seems to me that the right translation is brunette. Sibahi 13:42, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Alright, I think that brunette will work fine. I just changed it. Thanks everyone for their time and attention. --Jrastro 04:22, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Translated works

I thought it would be good to list some of Qabbani's work that is available in translation. I contributed a few titles I knew of in English, but I'm sure there has been translation into other languages, especially French; is anyone here familiar with Qabbani translations in other languages? Nachyk 20:13, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Help with editing Would be super nice if anyone could assist with correcting spelling of last name which should be Kabbani with K not Q. Was able to make the change in the text but not the title and other pages. Thank you -- Angelikmeg 23:19, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

how and where can we post something for new users who do not know about discussion pages? The user who asked for help in the first place with the spelling left his request on the article page and I quote "How to correct the exact spelling of Nizar Kabbani on this text please ? the Kabbani family name spells with a 'K', not with a 'Q' in all languages. Thank you. Issam Kabbani i.kabbani@mountcrest.com". have deleted it. Thanks for helping! --Angelikmeg 23:23, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I understand that someone may decide to personally render (for his or her name, for instance) but if I'm not mistaken the scholarly consensus for rendering Nizar Qabbani in English is "Nizar Qabbani." I believe this "q" is meant to reflect the Arabic letter "qaf." To declare that Kabbani is the only acceptable spelling is frankly false. It appears that other editors have kept the spelling as Qabbani. Also, is the word "pretigious" really necessary in the bio? It sounds non-encycolpedic to me. I also noticed that someone changed the "Brunette Told Me" back to "The Tanned Woman Said to Me." I thought the discussion on this discussion page came to a consensus. Please don't change anything in this article that has been decided by discussion to be rendered one way or another. Instead, contribute to the discussion and state your case for the changes. 71.160.10.48 19:34, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

It's Qabbani in all the books I've seen, including my Arabic textbook right in front of me (written, by the way, by Arabs), and as an Arabic speaker who is also an American, I know that Qabbani just makes more sense. I'm changing it back to "Q"; it's a matter of disambiguation, common sense, and Wikipedia guidelines (which do not endorse the use of "K" for transliteration of "ق" (qaf)). Lockesdonkey 19:11, 13 June 2007 (UTC)