About the Site

This blog, arabicmusictranslation.com (formerly musicarabi.blogspot.com), is dedicated to generating original translations of Arabic song lyrics into English. I founded the site in March 2007 as a project to help improve my Arabic knowledge in my continued study of Arabic language (I am a native speaker of English, not of Arabic). At present, this is the largest single source for original Arabic song translations on the web. While I don't make any claims that these translations are perfect, in fact they are certainly full of mistakes, I assure that I give my best effort on each one and do not translate songs unless I am quite clear about the meanings. This being said, suggestions and corrections are greatly appreciated.

Requests

One of the exciting features of this blog is that at least half the content is determined by its readers, that is, the songs I choose to translate to a great extent are based on your requests. To fill out a translation request form simply click here and supply the requested information. Due to the site's continued growth in content and traffic, it has become impossible for me to translate every song that enters my request box. In addition, songs are sometimes requested to which I am unable to find transcripted lyrics or fully understand their meanings. In these cases it would be irresponsible of me to provide incomplete or unsatisfactory translations, and thus I am unable to fulfill the request, but I retain the request for future consideration. I do not delete requests until they have been fulfilled or responded to by email. While not every request is fulfilled, I assure you that I read every request and investigate its feasibility. I try to handle requests on a first come first serve basis.

Comments

One of the useful aspects of the blog format for this site is that readers are able to leave comments. These comments could be of any nature you like provided that they are not too obscene (a little is OK). While songs do sometimes touch on controversial issues in the Arab world and the international community, any comments on sensitive political and social topics should be intelligent and I won't accept inflammatory or unsubstantiated comments. In the case that a comment is considered inappropriate or contains spam, ads, etc. I reserve the right to delete it. Comments on the translations themselves, that is, the meanings of lyrics, words in the song and the like are greatly appreciated because they improve the quality of the translations and allow me to learn new things. If you find a mistake don't consider it an imposition to correct it, this will do me a big favor! However, if you would like to request a song, please do not do so in the comment box. Instead fill out the translation request form to make sure I receive your request and can fulfill it in an organized fashion.

Media

I am proud to supply embedded audio and video to enhance the readers' experience as an innovation. As a free blog on Google's blogspot.com, this site has zero hosting costs. All media found on this site is hosted on third party sites such as youtube.com and other Arabic music sites, and they are the suppliers of all content for free. Thus, I do not personally have any of the audio or video files. Please do not send me emails asking where you can download them or if I can send them to you because I cannot. However, please leave a comment if a particular media file is not working so I can fix it.

Citations

When I pull content from other websites, which I frequently do to obtain transcription of lyrics in Arabic, I always supply the link to back track to for these lyrics. The most commonly linked to site for my lyrics transcriptions is la7oon.com. I have no problem with posting of content from this website on youtube.com or other locations, but please provide a link to our site as a reference so that it can be traced back. I do not block the text from being copied because I am happy to provide it as free information, but please do not steal it without citation or submit it to other lyrics sites that turn profits off advertising without actually doing any work for the translations. If you think for any reason that your content has appeared on this page without proper citation please let me know.

Donations

This site is not for profit and contains no advertising. Ads make the site slower and with the multimedia and everything involved in the site, I do not wish to clutter it with any additional content such as advertisements. This site is intended to provide information in and interactive and accessible form, not to make any money. This being said, this blog is not my full-time job and updating takes time. Thus, we do accept donations from those who are particularly grateful and wish to support the project. However, please do not feel obligated in any way to donate money, even if we have fulfilled translation requests for you. I hate paying for information and I don't expect any of you to pay for something I do voluntarily.

Authors

Another great function of the blog format is that I can add other authors who can submit content independently for me to edit and post on this page. These authors receive full credit for their work. If you are interested in being an author, please email me. Currently, I am especially in need of someone who can translate Maghrebi, Gulf, or Iraqi dialects as I am not very strong in these dialects!

Feedback

If you have anything to say feel free to email me. However, if you have a request once again, please fill out the translation request form so I can handle it in an organized fashion.