Transcriptions

Hi everyone! In the last few posts I’ve been working my way back through our fuS7a to shaami series and trying to update it. Today, though, I’ll be taking a break from that in order to do something a bit more advanced: a video transcription. Specifically, we’ll be looking at a clip from the Syrian TV series بقعة ضوء (Spotlight). I’ve uploaded the scene, complete with Arabic subtitles, below. This way, you can follow exactly what they’re saying in Arabic – hopefully allowing you to develop your listening skills. You can then work your way through the transcription and translation below. You can find the rest of the episode here if you feel like seeing how it plays out. ...

Wow, it’s been a long time! For our first post in over a year, let’s look at a political song that feels particularly relevant now (or maybe is always relevant): رئيس الجمهورية (‘President’) by خالد الهبر Khalid Il Habre (that’s how he spells it in English, don’t look at me), a Lebanese protest singer. I hope his lyrics make up for the dryness of my content. The video is available here. If you prefer, you can watch a version performed live on a TV show with two extremely pained-looking hosts – one of whom, Adel Karam, you may remember as the star of one of my earliest posts (although he had a better hairline then). ...

This post is about all the different things you can do with your eyes (عين عيون ‭3een 3yuun). As anybody who’s listened to any Arab pop song can attest, the word 3een and its various variations appears all the time in Arabic. In fact there are loads and loads of nice idioms to do with eyes which it’s worth learning a bit about. You can more or less divide these idioms up into three broad sections. The first set will be fairly familiar to English native speakers because they depend on a straightforward enough equivalence of eyes and seeing. The second set depends on a broad idea of the eye as something positive to be attached to compliments willy-nilly. The third set are to do with the evil eye. ...

This transcription is of a scene from حلاوة الروح (‘sweetness/beauty of the soul’, though a literal translation doesn’t quite cover the meaning), which if I remember correctly came out a couple of years ago during peak musalsal season. In it our two heroes, Sara and Isma’il, meet in a Beirut bar by chance. Isma’il is the brother of a childhood friend of Sara’s, Nisreen. Sara, an aspiring filmmaker, has just got back to Beirut after months staying at her father’s house in Dubai. She has left without telling her father, who runs a TV station there and had promised her a job, after months of disappointment in which she has not even seen him once. She tells her Lebanese friend (whose name I have forgotten) about her plans, and halfway through the conversation Isma’il comes over to introduce himself. ...

هلأ بدي اسألك سؤال. مين اكتر, نحنا ولا هنن؟ halla2 béddi és2alak su2aal. miin aktar, né7na wélla hénnen? I want to ask you a question. Are there more of us or more of them? miin aktar? – Unlike in (at least my) English, you say straightforwardly in Arabic ‘we are [X number]’, ‘we are many’, as opposed to ‘there are X of us, there are a lot of us. ...

The Syrian revolution is now in its sixth painful year with no sign of a resolution any time soon. Five years ago exactly, the regime’s tanks occupied the city centre of Hama after a month-long siege which claimed the lives of more than 200 civilians. Today’s transcription is the famous revolutionary song Get Out Bashar, sung by thousands in mass protests at the heart of Hama weeks before the tanks rolled in and still popular today. ...

As a student of Arabic it is only a matter of time before you encounter Lebanese pop star and feminist icon Nancy Ajram. Nancy (as she is generally known) is probably the most omnipresent icon of the Arab Pop scene, outselling even the equally Lebanese Najwa Karam, Elissa Khoury and Haifa Wehbe (that last one is… well, you could write a whole dissertation on that song).Thanks to Lebanon’s thriving trade in plastic surgery (عمليات تجميل) it can be sort of difficult to tell them all apart, but Nancy’s face is instantly recognised – and adored – worldwide. Wherever there is a grimy shisha café playing Rotana Clip on a wall-mounted TV, there Nancy will be in the midst of them. ...

Transcription of an interview with a surprisingly satisfied hijack-ee. With Cyprus, planes and nervous laughter.

The first Yasser al-Adma transcription, the Telegram, featuring an irascible sheikh and preposition-based poetry.

Hi everyone! For today I’ve transcribed a scene from غدا نلتقي ghadan naltaqi, a Ramadan series from 2015 that follows a group of Syrians living in an abandoned building in Beirut. In it we see Abu Abdo – the excitable patriarch of a traditional working-class family – bombarding his wife and children with information and speculation about possible refugee destinations. If you were already following Team Maha back in 2016, you might remember this video. But I’ve re-transcribed it and uploaded it with optional Arabic subtitles so you can follow the words as they’re being spoken. I hope you enjoy it! ...