As long-time readers know, I am not happy with My-Aramaic-Tattoo.com.

This sentiment I feel is re-enforced every once and a while when I get emails from individuals who have ordered from their website and wish to have their translations verified. Most of what I see are, in my opinion, what I’d call “dictionary translations” — that is to say, individual words that are looked up in a dictionary without a greater understanding of the language, itself to discern between forms.

As such, very much like with the “Tattoo eBook” they offer, I’ve seen rare forms of words that bear specific connotations, ambiguous forms of words that could mean one or another, words that are typeset in the scripts inappropriate to their dialect, etc.

This time, however, I have seen a translation that seems like a “dictionary translation” even moreso than before, because the manner in which it was executed was distinctly not what their customer had requested:

I was told by the customer that they had requested, “Love to dance” but were instead, given the above.

It is simply the two words “love” (khuba) and “dancing” (reqda; both nouns) in Syriac, not the simple verbal phrase “love to dance”. Furthermore, instead of using the unambiguous word for “dance” (raqadutha [1]) they chose a word that could mean either “dancing” (reqda) or “dancer” (reqada) due to lack of disambiguating vowels.[1][2]

If either of these words were to have been used in separate context, I would not find this odd at all. However, “love, dancing” is not the phrase that was requested (i.e. “love to dance”) to the point that their customer even noticed the disparity upon receipt of their order and decided to contact me.

Caveat venditor.

Peace
-Steve

NOTE: The Aramaic Blog is not affiliated with My-Aramaic-Tattoo. Statements about My-Aramaic-Tattoo and their services are opinions. Permission was granted by the customer to share their experience on The Aramaic Blog.

1) LS2 743
2) J. Payne-Smith 549.