Last month, Petra University students translated an interview from Arabic to English to help make a film for the Orphan Welfare Association of Baqa’a camp…
A job well done… and neither easy nor quick … as you can see below!
transcript and translation notes
Its kind of nice when all of our goals –> English, translation, conversation, culture, helping others .. can combine in one project 🙂
“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is ‘What are you doing for others?’ ”
— Rev. Martin Luther King
“Be the change you wish to see in the world” – Gandhi
“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, its not.” – Dr. Seuss
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single minute before starting to improve the world.” – Anne Frank
“No one can do everything, but everyone can do something.”
Today’s passionate debate flowed from the following quote …
“I’m not talking about blind optimism, the kind of hope that just ignores the enormity of the tasks ahead or the road blocks that stand in our path. I’m not talking about the wishful idealism that allows us to just sit on the sidelines or shirk from a fight.
I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting.”
– President Obama, 2012 Victory Speech
We discussed the hope, happiness, and positivity … as well as the lack of hope, unhappiness, and negativity … in our lives. A passionate debate ensued about finding happiness in a hard life — and whether or not Arabs, in general, and Jordanians, in particular, have a negative outlook on life.
The conversation could have had us talking for hours…
Does your environment define your happiness? Do your circumstances, and factors outside of your control, shape your attitude?
or does your attitude color your environment? Can you make up your mind to be happy, and maintain positivity no matter where you find yourself?
…. what effect can we have on our own lives? our own futures?
Needless to say, we didn’t come up with any answers.
But that wasn’t really the point, was it?
“It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.”
– Joesph Joubert
“Time spent arguing is, oddly enough, almost never wasted.” – Christopher Hitchens
We’re all born as individuals, each with our own personality, beliefs, etc. We all have different paths to follow, one which will lead us to our future, our destiny. Through the process of accomplishing this, we must go through a series of steps. These steps are unanticipated, and when we confront them, there are choices to make. At times, the simplest decisions can seem the most difficult. And when we finally take a step, we find ourselves on the wrong path.
We will make wrong choices, and as a result lessons will be learned. There will times when we will feel hurt, betrayed, and weak. Accordingly, in extreme cases they may drive us to actions and behaviors that we will regret later.
Everybody goes through these experiences. Trial and error is human, and perfection is something no one will ever accomplish. So what must we do to avoid such situations? There is no correct answer, because there is no right choice, nor a right path to choose. These instances will give us a chance to know who we really are. What things are important to us, and what we want for ourselves.
Here’s my theory: Stay true to yourself and don’t let the choices of others affect your path. In the end, it’s only you. Choose what is GOOD for you, and imagine these in your future. Be self-dependent and stay strong always.
This is life, and every day it takes a step forward. It works to change for the better, as should you.
“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. Its not.”
– Dr. Seuss
“As life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time, at peril of being judged not to have lived.”
– Oliver Wendell Holmes
The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects….
It will belong to those who see that wisdom can only emerge from the clash of contending views, the passionate expression of deep and hostile beliefs.
I died last year in a car accident I died last year in a car accident, I still remember like it just happened. These flashes pass by me every moment in my life. The night was silent as the wind … Continue reading →
Our first task was to identify his accent — a clear country accent with use of words like “ain’t” (meaning, is not… or am not/have not depending on the context) and colloquial grammar (“its how they always been” – instead of have been – or “there ain’t no reason” – double negative, instead of there is not any reason). Then it was on to the song… a complicated song with a lot of meaning.
The lyrics are full of words with double meaning – imagery – and rely on allusions (allusions = words that refer to a person/place/common phrase/cultural charactistic/world event).
We understood the main theme of the song from one of the first lines: “Prophets on the sidewalk beggin’ for change.” Who is on the sidewalk beggin’ for change? — as one student noted, that’s not a prophet “At3nni farata, at3nni farata.” So why would Brett Dennen call a beggar a prophet? After some discussion, a student pointed to the two meanings of “change” — farata (coins) and to change something. The beggars on the sidewalk, who literally beg for change (coins), are also begging for us to CHANGE our society… why are we a society that has people without homes, without food, without family? Perhaps beggars are “prophets” showing us this message.. Our group noted that this is true here, in Jordan, just as it is true in America — and in either place, “there ain’t no reason things are this way…I can’t explain why we live this way.”
I got a basket full of lemons and they all taste the same; a critique of the old American phrase “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” With a basket full of lemons, or hard things in life, it is not easy to make them better, “make lemonade”… instead, Brett says, they all taste the same.
Just as this song points to some world problems, our group discussed what we think are the biggest problem today. One member talked about “debt” and money, “people walk around pushin’ back their debt,” and the weight this puts on a person and on a family. Another member talked about our focus on appearances, “wearing paychecks like necklaces and bracelets.” This aspect of our society makes it hard to address real problems – that feel far away – just as this song notes when speaking of beggars, the homeless, the hungry, and slavery.
As one member noted… its not a happy song. Its about our problems — how they have always been there — and how they continue — and how its hard to change them.
But there’s a bright spot — “love will come set me free, I do believe.” Our group talked about hope for the future, about love for people – caring for people, and speaking up when you see things are wrong: “I don’t know why I say the things I say, but I say them anyway.” So we left the English Club on a more happy note, with plans to talk more about the world around us — “say them anyway.”
Petra University English Club 