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| McLoughlin of Arabia: memoirs of an interpreter Engaging autobiography is fascinating for anyone who has grappled with the mysteries and beauties of ArabicOn the face of it there was little in Leslie McLoughlin's background that prepared him for a lifetime revolving around the Arab world and the Arabic language – except that coming from a family divided between rural Lancashire and Liverpool he had a good ear for linguistic nuances that was useful as he knuckled down to his schoolboy Latin and French.McLoughlin first fell under the "spell of far Arabia" when he noticed his father using exotic words such as "bint," "shufti" and "yallah" – brought home from Egypt and the western desert in the second world war. The origins of the names of Indian and Pakistani cricketers such as Mushtaq Ali and Abdul Rahman fascinated him too. So in 1960, after national service, he rejoined the army to study Arabic at Durham University and then taught it to soldiers in the dying days of British control of Aden, Oman and the Gulf.Later he taught at the Foreign Office's Middle East Centre for Arabic Studies (Mecas) in Shemlan, Lebanon, the famous "school for spies" where generations of British Arabists practised their trilateral roots and conversational skills for cocktail party circuit and souk. Mecas, with an atmosphere like "a well-run officers' mess", survived temporary relocation to the UK during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war despite the lack of native speakers in Buckinghamshire. But the Lebanese civil war finished it off.Natural discretion and the Official Secrets Act have prevented McLoughlin from spilling many beans about his 20 years as an interpreter for British ministers and Arab VIPs. (The titillating "confessions" in the title of his book is thus a tad misleading.) It would have been fascinating to hear a fly on the wall account of talks between Margaret Thatcher and the Saudi royals about the massive al-Yamamah arms deal; or a frank report on what happened when Saddam Hussein's deputy came to Downing Street to negotiate UK export credits during the war with Iran.Still, this engaging autobiography is fascinating and fun for anyone who has grappled with the mysteries and beauties of Arabic and wants to hear from an expert practitioner how teaching methods have evolved in recent years.McLoughlin is good on the frustratingly wide gap between literary and spoken Arabic in its regional variations from Kuwait to Morocco. He reports the magnificent put-down of an old school academic – a world-renowned expert on early Islam – who advised him sniffily to take a course with Berlitz if he wanted to actually speak Arabic. The professor gratifyingly relented later and admitted that it does make sense to stray from Qur'anic exegesis and learn to speak from the very beginning.Interpretation from any language involves pitfalls but there are always special sensitivities in the Middle East. McLoughlin has a lovely anecdote about a minister whose strong Scottish accent misled an interpreter into rendering the anodyne phrase "Britain's role in the Gulf" as the explosive "Britain's rule in the Gulf" – obviously not a welcome idea east of Suez in post-colonial days.Arabists of all levels will enjoy the convoluted translation of the ubiquitous and marvellously expressive word "ya'ani" (literally "it means") by a super-cautious Saudi interpreter during a fraught diplomatic exchange: "Having regard to all the circumstances and taking into account the probable ramifications of what you suggested we would prefer to reserve our position." McLoughlin points too to the problem of serious confusion over the word "if" in written Arabic – "idha maa" – which, infuriatingly, in ordinary spoken Arabic means "if not". It's surprising that misunderstanding between Arabic speakers and others isn't even greater than it is.Knowing a foreign language is supposed to be a handy weapon in the struggle that is life. Except, of course, when it actually turns out to be dangerous to its user. McLoughlin, perhaps wisely, doesn't dwell on this disconcerting point when he describes fleeing Lebanon with his family when the security situation deteriorated in 1976. The trick was to pretend, for their own safety, that they were monoglots who didn't speak a word of Arabic. They were relieved to hear a gunman shout: "Let them go, they're English and don't know what's going on." They crossed the border unscathed into Syria.Confessions of an Arabic Interpreter: The Odyssey of an Arabist, 1959-2009, Motivate PublishingMiddle EastIan Blackguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
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Merkel's own goal | Philip Oltermann Germany's leader is wrong about multiculturalism, even though a recent football match may have rattled herToday, when I heard reports of Angela Merkel announcing that multiculturalism had "utterly failed", my first thoughts were: who is she talking about? I am German, and I have a sister whose three boys are half-Peruvian. My brother's children are part-Japanese. My partner is English. Were we all utter failures?"Multi-kulti" covers a grey area somewhere between co-existence and co-operation, and one hopes the German chancellor was trying to speak in favour of team-play and against mere tolerance. My guess is that Merkel wasn't talking about us, or about Poles, Italians or Greeks living in Germany, but about her country's 4 million-strong Muslim population – in which case she has still chosen her words terribly badly. The result is a faux pas uncharacteristic of a politician who has won a reputation for treading quietly in matters diplomatic.So what made her say it? The question over how to integrate Muslim migrants and the rest of German society is hardly new: politicians and commentators have been discussing it ever since the first wave of Gastarbeiter (migrant workers) arrived in the 1960s. If you look at the figures alone, there would be no particular reason to reheat the debate at this time: the number of Turkish immigrants into Germany in 2008 was as low as it had last been in 1983, according to Der Spiegel magazine, and the number of asylum applications is about a sixth of what it was in the mid-90s. More Turks returned to Turkey last year than came to live in Germany, which is actually bad news for the German economy, because with the population forecast to fall by 11.6 million by 2050, the country needs every qualified worker it can get its hands on.A recent football match might have rattled Merkel a little: a Euro 2012 qualifier in Berlin, in which Turkey fans outnumbered the home support and jeered German-born midfielder Mesut Ă–zil, who had rejected the Turkish star in favour of the German FA's eagle. Assuming that most of the Turkey fans were Berlin-based, Merkel's interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, was appalled. "These are precisely the kind of integration deficits we are talking about," he said, "and it's not a mistake to address them." But even then the positives outweigh the negatives: Ă–zil silenced the whistles by scoring the second goal in a 3-0 win, acting as the beating heart of a German-Turkish-Polish-Lebanese-Ghanaian-Nigerian team that has come to symbolise successful "Multi-kulti" in action.There was a time when you needed to look hard for successful examples of Turkish integration. Not anymore: Fatih Akin, for example, is one of the saviours of Germany's cinema industry. Another, Cem Ă–zdemir, is the head of the resurgent Green party and fast becoming a headache for Merkel: public disgruntlement with the conservative's urban development in Stuttgart, Ă–zdemir's home turf, has recently won the Green's their first majority in a large city.For the last 10 years, my mother has been volunteering as a German teacher for schoolchildren with reading problems in Hamburg. It used to be mainly young Turks who turned up to her classes – these days, she says, she's having as much of a problem with German kids who can't read their Goethe.Politicians tend to say stupid things when they are under pressure, but in this instance the pressure is coming from within Merkel's own party, rather than society at large. Ever since the former Social Democrat Bundesbank executive Thilo Sarrazin published a book called Deutschland Schafft Sich Ab (Germany is Digging its Own Grave) in August in which he polemicised against the 'dumbing down' of German society through the Muslim population, the right wing of Merkel's CDU party has felt its own kind of claustrophobia. Horst Seehofer, head of the CDU's Bavarian sister party, moved to outflank Sarrazin this week, announcing an integration programme towards German Judeo-Christian "leading culture". Perhaps Merkel and Seehofer are merely trying to close the political gap that might open up for antagonists with an explicity anti-Islamist agenda.Merkel's diplomatic style has made her an unusually popular chancellor – according to a recent Spiegel survey, 59% of the population are happy to see her as a representative of their nation. She has to be careful that party calls for a more hardline approach don't ruin her legacy.IslamReligionAngela MerkelGermanyPhilip Oltermannguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
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