(note to readers: as you will no doubt quickly ascertain, today’s column is a brazen play for page hits, an arguably pathetic attempt to improve my position on Google searches by something even less intellectually credible than wordplay. If you are looking for a higher standard of insight and clever commentary, check back in tomorrow or scroll down to read previous columns)
While browsing merrily through the internet a few minutes ago, I came across a Time magazine article on the 112 or so possible ways to spell Muammar Kaddafi. Basically, the problem is that you have to transliterate from another alphabet. In Arabic, there is an official,
Karima el-Mahroug
correct spelling. Journalists have no problems spelling names that are in German, French or Spanish. Languages like Swedish or Czech, which have a couple of different letters, are not a big problem. But if you are translating from Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, Hindi, Thai, Chinese or a host of others, the best you can come is close. It works both ways. That’s why baseball is baysubaru in Japan. They didn’t actually change anything. That’s just as close as you can come using their (or, rather, 1 of their 3) alphabets.
Anyway, I recently got a lot of hits to my website because people were apparently looking for hot pictures of Karima el-Mahrough, Silvio Berlusconi’s sexy teenage friend, which could also be, I suppose, Qarima or Garima, and I’ve seen the last name both with and without the prefix, and both aitches seem to be optional. So, Karima el-Mahroug, Qarima Marough, Garima el-Maroug. I don’t really like putting an h at the end because I can’t see the point and it looks like “rough.” I don’t know anything about her routine except that involves belly dancing, of a fairly revealing nature, but I haven’t seen it described in any news source as rough. I kind of like the h before the r, though, it gives it sort of a breathy, sexy sound. So, I’m going with either Karima Mahroug or Karima el-Mahroug. Whichever turns up more often on Google searches.
But it’s no surprise that she goes by the name of Ruby the Heartbreaker.
www.gurukalehuru.com 