Translators

Salam Al-Marayati began working at the Muslim Public Affairs Council more than 20 years ago, and his is a job that only seems to get more demanding Al-Marayati was 3 when his family moved to the United States from Iraq; as the president of the L.A.-based national group, he's become a cultural translator and a kind of human shield between misperceptions of the Muslim faith and several million believers living here. Invoking the Koran (he's holding one in the picture) and the Constitution, he plays offense and defense, making himself available for reporters, politicians and law enforcement, and blogging on matters like the Ft. Hood massacre.

Three years ago I was sitting in a room in New York with some actors, a director and a young Iraqi woman named Wassan who was going over an early draft of my play "Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo" and helping the actors with the Arabic that is peppered throughout the script. Wassan went through the lines I had written out in English and translated them, and then helped the actors with the pronunciations and the phonetic spellings so they could go home and practice speaking in a different language.

A new program in which residents who speak Mandarin or Cantonese can get translators to help them communicate with City Hall has begun in Rosemead. Translation services in Mandarin and Cantonese will be provided at no cost by the Asian Business Connection at (800) 777-CLUB through a special telephone line. Spanish translation services are already provided by Spanish-speaking staff members at City Hall, (818) 288-6671.

The U.S. Department of Justice has reached agreement with San Diego County to ensure that voters receive translation assistance or materials in Spanish, Tagalog and Vietnamese. Justice officials said Wednesday the settlement was reached after it was determined that the county had not complied with sections of the federal Voting Rights Act requiring outreach to minority voters.

Take a Hollywood plot, sprinkle in cheesy song-and-dance numbers and pour in a gallon of melodrama. Shake well, and you've got a Bollywood movie. But Bollywood, which churns out some 800 movies annually, may be forced to alter its recipe after bestselling novelist Barbara Taylor Bradford persuaded India's Supreme Court last month to ban a 260-part TV series that she claimed stole heavily from her novels.

It took John Sandefur 12 years to cross the cultural gulf between his native Louisiana and the wilds of northern Australia before he could translate the Bible into the "Holi Baibul." Sandefur, a Christian missionary, has just finished translating portions of the Bible into the Kriol Language of the Australian aborigines with whom he lives and works at Roper River in the outback, some 2,500 miles from Sydney.

With business picking up overseas, U.S. corporations are spending more money to have product brochures, technical documents and business letters translated into foreign languages. But with professional translators charging up to $70 per page, having a lengthy business document translated can be expensive, especially for a small firm trying to crack a foreign market. So some executives have looked for a high-tech solution.

Outside the elevator at the Manhattan offices of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, a glass case is filled with books showcasing the recent publishing season--poetry by Seamus Heaney; a collection of essays by Derek Walcott; Tom Wolfe's new novel; a young adult novel, "Flapjack"; and a bilingual edition of the poems of Eugenio Montale. His name spreads across the top of the dust jacket in pale yellow lettering starkly set against a black background.

I HAVE BEEN teaching modern Middle Eastern history for more than 20 years. I've helped train many graduate students, some of whom have gone on to become professors at universities across the country. But one of my current New York University graduate students, Mohammed Yousry, faces a very different future. Convicted a year ago of participating in a conspiracy to abet terrorism, he may be sentenced to as many as 20 years in federal prison.