Talk:Arabist

Source issues

The copyvio issues alluded to below have been dealt with in the present article. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:00, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

Because nearly all of this material comes from the Spanish-language Wikipedia, it is mostly about Arabists in Spain. If someone can add material about other places, we could easily factor out a lot of this to a country-specific article, with a representative summary here. However, it seemed detailed, well-researched, and worth translating. -- Jmabel | Talk 03:04, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)

Translation suspended pending possible copyvio in es:Arabista, from which I was translating. All but the first paragraph is derivative work from that source. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:35, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)

It's been months, and no one seems to have done a thing toward resolving this on the Spanish-language Wikipedia. I suppose we could assume there is no problem, but I, for one, don't feel like putting lots of effort into translating material that may later get deleted for plagiarism. Any suggestions on how to proceed? -- Jmabel | Talk 00:14, Jan 13, 2005 (UTC)

The Spanish Wikipedians seem to have reached consensus (on I know not what basis) that there is no problem here. I, for one, will choose to trust them and to resume the process of translation. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:50, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

Man... I'm working on it, but I have to say: there is a lot of internal evidence that this was written about 40 years ago. For example: "El actual director de la Escuela de Estudios Árabes es Jaime Oliver Asín (1905), extraordinario filólogo y romanista autor de Historia del nombre «Madrid» (Madrid 1959), de excelentes estudios toponímicos y de valiosos trabajos sobre moriscos. Finalmente, hay que citar a Leopoldo Torres Balbás (1888-1960)..." "Actual" in Spanish means "current". So this is saying that the current director is someone born in 1905, and gives no work of his past 1960? -- Jmabel | Talk 08:15, Mar 26, 2005 (UTC)

Alternate definition of "Arabist"

Can anyone give a citation for the recently anonymously added alternate definition of "Arabist"? I've never heard of it, and I'm inclined to revert in the absence of a citation. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:46, Feb 16, 2005 (UTC)

I have never heard or seen "arabist" used in any other sense than "specialist in Arabic philology". I agree that it should be reverted unless a citation is given. / u p p l a n d 07:33, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Actually, the Arabist (political) article gives a reference to a book: Arabists: The romance of the american Elite by Robert D. Kaplan ISBN 0028740238. The question is perhaps how idiosyncratic Kaplan's use is. Is he the only one using the word in that sense? / u p p l a n d 07:44, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

In pro-Israel circles in the US and UK, "Arabist" is a term used (slightly contemptuously) to refer to a group from an upper-crust elite social background who received a highly academic and purely theoretical ivory-tower training in Classical Arabic language and literature, after which they went to live in the middle east for a few months or years, and then emerged back to the UK or US with a highly romanticized view of desert Bedouins as some kind of Rousseauian noble savages -- accompanied with an implacable and rigidly-inflexible opposition to increased Jewish emigration to Palestine / the emergence of any sovereign Jewish political entity / any open support for Israel which might further anger the Arabs (depending on the decade). In England, Arabists (according to this definition) were generally pith-helemeted twits with a public-school and Oxbridge education, while in America they were pin-striped Ivy-League WASPs with a genteel anti-Semitism of the "Gentleman's Agreement" movie type -- and among pro-Israel advocates, it was thought that such Arabists had a stranglehold lock on Foggy Bottom and the Foreign Office until the mid-1960's. A lot of AIPAC's activities which some have characterized as overkill or beating the dead horse are actually aimed at pre-emptively preventing the accumulation of a critical wieght of "Arabists" in certain critical locations within the U.S. government. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by AnonMoos (talk • contribs) 20 Aug 2005.

In short, not so much a different sense of the word as a disdain for Arabist scholars, apparently shared by AnonMoos. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:55, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Actually it seems more of a US thing than anything. US-Israel politics. (Collounsbury 08:20, 5 February 2006 (UTC)).

See now Talk:Arabist (political) for further discussion. A fair number of people have highly-emotional opinions concerning the legacy of the old-style Arabists who influenced policymaking, but don't really care about philological scholars who studied classical Arabic texts and published weighty academic tomes, so there's in fact a difference. AnonMoos 18:39, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Well aware of the other page, as well as the "highly emotional opinions" (as in e.g. the 20 Aug 05 comment) - regardless it rather strikes me as a US-centric 'issue' centered around US-Israeli politics. The difference between the philologists and the political axe-grinding was not the object of my comment. (Collounsbury 02:33, 17 February 2006 (UTC))

Copy vio?

The copyvio issues alluded to below have been dealt with in the present article. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:00, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

Why does Jmabel think this is a copyvio, and how could it possibly be, since its been translated? Assuming the spanish version was a copyvio, this wouldn't be, because in translation and editing the wording has surely been changed more than enough... (Sam Spade | talk | contributions) 16:42, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

No. One does not have the right to translate closely a piece that someone else owns the copyright on. Think for a moment about book publishing (since this certainly came from a book). If it weren't for this, there would essentially be no such thing as selling the foreign rights to a book.

Again, I did a lot of work on this article before becoming convinced that the source was "polluted". It's not like I want to throw away my work, but I think it's clear that in copyright matters we should err on the side of caution. That's what I've done restarting this at Arabist/Temp: much of that is a much looser rendition of the same material, which will stand us in much better legal stead.

Frankly, I think es:Arabista was an example of a much more general problem that the Spanish Wikipedia has very little scrutiny for copyvios. I anticipate trouble, sooner or later. I'd like to make as sure as possible that when that trouble comes down, the English-language Wikipedia is well insulated from it. -- Jmabel | Talk 17:11, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

Well, what is the source text you are suggesting for this postulated copyvio? Sorry to be difficult, but I like the article ;) (Sam Spade | talk | contributions) 06:49, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sam, I don't have a source text. What I have is two pieces of evidence. (1) This massive article was created at a single blow in the Spanish Wikipedia by a contributor who contributed exactly two massive articles, both within minutes of one another, and was never heard from again. (2) The internal evidence in the article suggests that it was written in the late 1960s. The holder of a position at that time is described as actual (current), and no later work in the field is mentioned.

Since I'm pretty much the only one who has worked on this in English, as far as the English-language Wikipedia is concerned I am not suggesting throwing away someone else's work. I am not willing to continue translating the remaining roughly 60% of this, because I don't believe we come by it honestly.

Besides all that, the Spanish-language article was very hispanocentric. In modern times, Spain has not been the center of world Arabism, but you would never know that from reading their article.

Please see Arabist/Temp, where I've made a solid start on a version that will not have copyright issues. I intend to work further on the article, but I want to build it on what I can confidently say is a solid foundation. -- Jmabel | Talk 16:07, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

Well since the copyvio issue will likely never be resolved, can we at least replace Arabist with Arabist/Temp? (Sam Spade | talk | contributions) 18:49, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Fine by me. I was just trying to follow protocol, I don't tend to monitor the process at WP:CP much. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:36, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

Copyvio Status

The old article with the copyvio problems has been moved to Arabist/copyvio pending deletion (which is being held up for technical reasons: compressed history and all that). Meanwhile, an article that should not raise copyright problems (but which could still use some serious expansion) has been moved into place. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:00, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

translation of obsolete words

According to the Real Academy dictionary, "asayar" is an obselete word which means "experimentar." I have accordingly translated assayamientos as "experiences", presuming that the doubled "s" in the root is just an artifact of non-regularized 15th century orthography. Anyone have a comment on that? jackbrown 16:46, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

On the other hand, "A History of the Graeco-Latin Fable: Introduction and from the Origins to the Hellenistic Age" by Francisco Rodriguez Adrados, Leslie A. (TRN) Ray, Gert-Jan Van Dijk, translates the title of the book to a more likely sounding "Book of the Deceits and Lies of Women" Is it considered better wiki form to rely on someone else's (authoritative sounding) translation than your own? I'm neutral in that even though I speak fluent Spanish, I've never heard of this word.jackbrown 17:02, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd go with the professionally published title. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:52, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

July 1632

Is this uncited, anonymous indication of a date, by an IP with no other edits correct? If someone can't cite for it, I'm inclined to revert. - Jmabel | Talk 04:38, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Screed on Racism

It is very hard to follow what on earth most of that text has to do with Arabists, as academic specialists on the Arabo-Islamic world. Much of it seems to be a highly POV screed about 'Arab' racism (claimed or whatever) rather than Arabists. If no one objects, I am going to remove it. (collounsbury (talk) 13:00, 29 September 2008 (UTC))

On looking at Edit History, I see the text was added by a sockpuppet of a banned or blocked user. As the text as is appears largely a highly POV screed, and it appears was reverted by a likely sockpuppet, I am reverting pending actual discussion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Collounsbury (talk • contribs) 13:07, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! BrainyBabe (talk) 15:14, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

No problem. (collounsbury (talk) 15:29, 29 September 2008 (UTC))

William Duff

How is William Duff from the Middle East? I think he should be moved to the above section.

2601:1C0:6A01:5DE0:1C93:8F25:2B7A:100C (talk) 17:09, 8 November 2020 (UTC)