Muslim scholars are working on a Gaelic translation of the Koran in an attempt to promote better understanding between faiths.
The Muslim Academic Trust, which is publishing the translation, said that it was important that every language had a version of the holy book.
Abdal Hakim Murad, who heads the trust and lectures on religion at the University of Cambridge, said: “The Koran speaks of the diversity of human languages as a sign of God’s beauty and creative power. We feel that the specific genius of each language needs to be honoured by Muslims, and that a good translation of the Koran would be an important way of bringing this about.”
Although Scottish Muslims have embraced the project, which costs £50,000, church leaders in the Western Isles, where 61percent of the population speak Gaelic, say that there is no demand for a Gaelic Koran. The Reverend Iver Martin, of Stornoway Free Church, said: “I wouldn’t have thought there would be much of a market for this. I’m not sure that a lot of Gaelic-speaking people would be inclined to read it.
What can executives learn from former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s controversial ownership of Manchester City Football Club?
Frequently hailed as one of the canniest entrepreneurs in Thailand, he has been lambasted in the British press for his treatment of his now ex-manager Sven-Göran Eriksson.
When Mr Thaksin became owner last year, he demanded a top 10 place in the premier league – the world’s toughest – from a club that had flirted with relegation the previous season.
Mr Eriksson revamped the team and delivered a comfortable ninth place, the club’s highest level for 15 years. Arch-rival Manchester United was also beaten in the process: at home and away. This was not good enough for Mr Thaksin who, reports say, was infuriated by the team’s worsening performance as the season progressed.
We do not know what was said behind closed doors but it is probably fair to speculate that the new owner – a figure of tremendous influence in his home country – did not gel with the famously cool Scandinavian.
Mr Thaksin, of course, is playing to a bigger audience than Manchester City supporters; in soccer-mad Thailand he is positioning himself as a reborn political saviour of the disadvantaged, after being ousted by a military junta in September 2006.
There might also be a clash of cultures behind the humiliation of a successful manager who remained in limbo for weeks, unable to walk away for fear of risking his hefty remuneration, but apparently expecting to be sacked at any time.
Mr Thaksin, a former policeman with a post-graduate degree from the US, is fond of promoting “modern” business techniques, yet he remains steeped in Thai culture.
He tends – like most Thais – to trust family, friends and old associates, above all others. So he placed loyal executives and a son and a daughter on the Manchester City board.
The success of Barack Obama’s campaign is, needless to say, due to a variety of factors. One of these factors is his intercultural competence by which I mean here: Keep it simple, stay on message, keep your message open. “Yes we can” is appealing because it purposefully does not address what we can.
That is too general, that is a cliché people often say when they want to dismiss a certain point of view. To label something a cliché is a killer-argument. Like saying an argument is illogical or empty rhetoric.
Truth is that we need clichés and that we cannot do without generalisations. The trick is to employ them intelligently. We use for instance “the Japanese” or “the Americans” despite our knowing that it would be rather doubtful if this typical Japanese or American really exists. Yet even if the clichés we entertain in regard to national characteristics might not withstand further scrutiny, it is a social fact that we constantly, be it in speech, be it in writing, refer to them. As Timothy Garton Ash some time ago reported in The Guardian:
“Madam Secretary, this will work in practice but will it work in theory?” The reported remark of a senior French official to the then American secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, sums what both the Americans and the British like to think of as a profound difference between French and Anglo-Saxon ways of thinking. But here’s a curious role-reversal to mark the 100th anniversary of the entente cordiale between France and Britain: on the Iraq war, Blair was right in theory but Chirac was right in practice.
The question whether Garton Ash’s assessment regarding Iraq is correct or not is not my concern here. I do however feel that his playful handling of cliché is done in a way that we would be well advised to pursue.
To effectively communicate in a nation as culturally diverse as the United States of America one needs intercultural competence. By this I do not mean that you conduct a poll to figure out what the Texans like to hear, by this I mean that you bring your message down to the lowest common denominator.
The International Search Summit in the British Library looks set to catch the attention of the search engine marketing (SEM) world.
Heralded as a “top quality event” by its organisers, the summit will cover topics from online marketing to link building.
However, attendees will no doubt be enthralled by the in-depth consideration of multilingual search engine marketing issues, spurred on by the multilingual web marketing hosts, WebCertain.
The summit could also leave marketers pondering the importance of introducing multilingual elements into their web design.
According to WebCertain’s managing director, Andy Atkins-Kruger, it is “something that every company must consider”.
He added: “Multilingual and international search is something that every company must consider and implement if it wants to maximise its global online potential.”
After sparking outrage among disabled advocacy groups for insensitive language in an official guide for Olympics volunteers, the Beijing Olympics organizers have issued an apology and will rewrite the offending handbook.
The guide had described disabled athletes and spectators as a “special group” with “unique personalities and ways of thinking.” It went on to say that “some physically disabled are isolated, unsocial, and introspective; they usually do not volunteer to contact people. They can be stubborn and controlling; they may be sensitive and struggle with trust issues. Sometimes they are overly protective of themselves, especially when they are called ‘crippled’ or ‘paralyzed.’”
Last week one Olympics official had said the problem resulted from a poor translation, though the AP noted that the original Chinese version “contained many of the same stereotypes.”
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