How the British Library is approaching the delicate task of translating their archives

大英图书馆如何应对翻译档案这一艰巨任务？

By Nisreen AlzaraeeHistorical records are often problematic in nature, particularly when they originate from colonial administrations. Dealing with such records in translation raises a variety of ethical as well as practical questions.   The British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership (BLQFP) project is digitising material from multiple collections related to the history of the Gulf. These digitised records are published in the Qatar Digital Library (QDL) with enhanced bilingual catalogue descriptions in English and Arabic. The vast majority of the material comes from the India Office Records (IOR), which incorporates the archival records of the English East India Company and the India Office. They span centuries of colonial activity across different continents, cultures and peoples.
历史记录往往存在问题，特别是来自殖民政府的记录。在翻译这些记录时，会面临各种伦理和现实问题。大英图书馆与卡塔尔基金会合作的项目（BLQFP）正在对与海湾历史相关的多个收藏品进行数字化。这些数字化记录在卡塔尔数字图书馆（QDL）中发布，其中包含了英语和阿拉伯语的双语目录说明。大部分材料来自印度办事处记录（IOR），其中包括英国东印度公司和印度办事处的档案。这些记录跨越了几个世纪的殖民活动，涉及不同的大陆、文化和民族。

In trying to describe this material, cataloguers and translators on the BLQFP recognised the potential for a position of ‘neutrality’ to morph into complicity with the colonial administration. These in-house teams had been grappling with individual questions of terminology for years, but in 2020 there was an opportunity to build on emerging approaches and resources to develop a dedicated and evolving set of guidelines for conscientious bilingual description (CBD).
在试图描述这些材料的过程中，BLQFP的编目和翻译人员意识到，“中立”立场有可能演变成与殖民政府的共谋。多年来，这些内部团队一直在努力解决个别术语的翻译问题。直到2020年，他们抓住机会，利用新兴的研究方法和资源，旨在为尽职尽责的双语描述（CBD），制定了一套专门且不断完善的指南。

In the CBD process, potentially offensive and/or problematic terms are identified and thoroughly researched before being categorised into one of four levels: not problematic, sometimes problematic, always problematic, and problematic and offensive. The guidelines then provide recommendations on how to treat the terms in both English and Arabic.
在制定CBD的过程中，潜在的冒犯性或存在问题的术语会被识别出来，经过深入研究，将其分为四个级别：没有问题、有时有问题、总是有问题、有问题且存在争议。之后，指南就如何处理英语和阿拉伯语中的术语提供了建议。

Levels of treatment include using quotation marks and providing additional context in parentheses, and/or adding the term to the QDL’s hyperlinked bilingual glossary to provide more information. The most complex terms require such extensive historical and linguistic contextualisation that they warrant longer-form exploration under the QDL’s expert articles section. An example is ‘Bania’. Terms may require thoughtful treatment in either language for a variety of reasons, but some pose particular questions for translation. While the IOR material is predominantly in English, it features words borrowed or adapted from other languages, including Arabic. Two such terms that have generated much discussion are fallāḥ and Mohammedan.
不同级别术语的处理方法包括使用引号、在括号中提供额外语境、或将术语添加到QDL的超链接双语词汇表中以提供更多信息。对于一些特别复杂的术语，由于其需要广泛的历史和语言背景化，会在QDL的专家文章部分进行更深入的探讨。例如“Bania”一词。基于各种原因，术语在两种语言中都需要经过深思熟虑的处理，但有些术语在翻译中极具挑战性。虽然IOR的材料主要是英语，但其中包含的词汇来源于其他语言，包括阿拉伯语。两个引起诸多讨论的术语是fallāḥ和Mohammedan。

Fallāḥ (pl. fallāḥīn) is originally an Arabic word فلاح،ين فلاحين equivalent to ‘agricultural labourer’ or ‘farmer’. In Arabic, the word also has ethnic implications dating back to the Arab conquest of Egypt when it was used favourably to refer to indigenous Egyptians.
Fallāḥ（复数fallāḥīn）最初是一个阿拉伯词فلاح،ين فلاحين，相当于“农业劳动者”或“农民”。在阿拉伯语中，这个词也有种族含义，源自阿拉伯征服埃及时，被用来指称土生土长的埃及人。

By contrast, when British colonial officials use fallāḥ in the IOR files, it is usually to refer disparagingly to agricultural labourers or their political/social class (a usage closer in meaning to ‘peasant’). Although the word is originally Arabic, a simple back-translation here would misrepresent its usage in the colonial files, introducing a positive or neutral connotation that is not present in the English. At the same time, there is no better alternative word to use in the translation.
相比之下，当英国殖民官员在印度办事处记录（IOR）文件中使用“fallāḥ”一词时，通常带有轻蔑的意味，用来指代农业劳动者或他们所属的政治/社会阶层（意思更接近于“农民”）。尽管该词最初为阿拉伯语，但简单的回译将误导其在殖民档案中的使用情况，引入了英文中不存在的积极或中性含义。同时，译文中并无更好的替代词。

While it might suffice in the English description to enclose the term in quotation marks – indicating a direct quotation, and our distance from the colonial administrators’ perspective – the Arabic demanded an additional step. After assessing whether the word had been used in any other contexts across the QDL, the term was added to both the English and Arabic glossaries, thereby providing the necessary historical context on how it is specifically used in these records.
虽然在英语描述中，将该术语用引号括起来足以表明这是直接引用，也表达了我们与殖民地管理者视角之间的距离，但在阿拉伯语中，仍需采取其它步骤。在评估该词是否在卡塔尔数字图书馆（QDL）的其他语境中使用过之后，该术语被添加到英语和阿拉伯语词汇表中，从而为这些记录中特定使用的必要历史背景提供了所需的信息。

With such interventions, we aim to introduce distance between ourselves and the colonial authors of the records. By signalling the language, its connotations and biases, rather than simply accepting and reproducing it, we hope to encourage QDL users in Arabic and English to consider the records more critically. The archive is not neutral, nor is its language. They both reflect the colonial project with its imperialist agendas and prejudices.
通过这些干预措施，我们的目标是与这些记录的殖民作者保持距离。我们希望通过明确标示语言的内涵和偏见，而不是简单地接受和复制它们，鼓励卡塔尔数字图书馆（QDL）的阿拉伯语和英语用户以更批判性的视角看待这些记录。档案并非中立，其语言亦然。它们都反映了带有帝国主义议程和偏见的殖民计划。

Like most scholarly efforts in this area, CBD remains a work in progress. It is evolving and expanding as the BLQFP teams continue to evaluate the content and context of the collections, hoping to set multilingual standards for the ongoing treatment of colonial and imperialist language.
如同该领域内的大多数学术努力，CBD仍处于不断发展的阶段。随着BLQFP团队继续评估藏品的内容和背景，这个过程正在不断发展壮大，希望为殖民地和帝国主义语言的持续处理制定多语种标准。

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