As a translation student, I’m interested in how language reflects social values and everyday practices. In Arabic, there are many expressions and terms that are closely tied to cultural traditions, social norms, and shared experiences. These expressions often carry meanings that go beyond their literal definitions.
Words and phrases related to hospitality, honor, kinship, and social responsibility, for example, convey layers of meaning shaped by history and culture. When translated into English, these terms may appear simple or incomplete, as much of their cultural significance cannot be conveyed through direct translation. This highlights the importance of cultural awareness in translation and the need to go beyond words in order to communicate meaning.
There are several perspectives to your whereabouts:
In terms of cultural appropriation, it depends, if we’re looking at a pretty superficial interaction that doesn’t require any further explanation than what we believe the user already knows it’s possible to simply translate from the dictionary or from the top of our heads, when an additional context is required we an either add it in parenthesis if it’s short enough or deduce from the total UX experience if we have anything that will allow us to elaborate about the subject (tooltip, image, subtitle, etc).
In books it looks different, you’ll have to decide whether you want to expose the reader to a certain agenda before introducing the term or explain about the term as it develops when required but you can’t “hide“ the meaning in tooltips, etc. like you would do in UI.
Along the years several supporting technologies were developed, some of them specifically for context and the others for accessibility, etc. that allow elaborating when needed.
There are cases where direct translation to a language other than English is preferred, for example: in Korean there are different ways to address/greet older/younger people or from superior or inferior position to yours, so directly translating from Arabic to Korean would be more cultural appropriate when needed.
Other cases include different sounds, Arabic shares some unique pronunciation consonants with Hebrew, one of the most popular examples are Aladdin (originally from French) which was translated to Hebrew as אלאדין (Pretty similar to the French/English pronunciation, the ‘Ayin/ع consonant is not even used), but the original term in Arabic is actually علاء الدين (The original Arabic pronunciation: 'Alāʼ ad-Dīn), which should have been: עלאא א־דין (the ע at the beginning is the equivalent of ع) if the Hebrew translation used the original as a source instead of French.
It’s better to be proficient in both cultures when translating but if that’s not possible you’ll just have to use more AI and explain the exact need and motivation for this translation as much as possible.