Welcome to my blog about my experiences while living in Algeria!Did you know… Birth Cetificates
Did you know that when a child is born in Algeria they are issued two birth certificates? One in Arabic and one in French. If you offer a not so popular name in French then they have to guess the Arabic translation to put on the certificate. Not a very sophisticated method of translation. But, then, if you are not planning on porting over the Arabic version during your world travels, it may not make such a huge difference.
Technorati Tags: Algeria, birth certificates, French, Arabic, two versions
November 4th, 2007 at 10:26 am
hmm I’ve learned something new today! I love FYI’s
November 18th, 2007 at 1:16 am
Actually- it is as sophisticated a method as you would find anyplace else. Its called transliteration. When you give your child a French name and a clerk must translate it into Arabic- he or she has to choose Arabic letters and vowels to create a name that “sounds like,” the French name you have chosen. This isn’t an easy task- as Arabic is not a latin based language. It has its own letters- which are not the same as the those used in latin-based languages- such as French and Spanish. As special as your child’s name may be to you- it is quite possible that it has absolutely no meaning in Arabic and therefore cannot be “translated” in any sense other than phonetically.
November 21st, 2007 at 3:29 am
THAT IS NOT TRUE.yOU GET AN ARABIC COPY ONLY.iF YOU WANT A TRANSLATED COPY YOU HAVE TO ASK FOR ONE AND WAIT 2/3WEEKS FOR IT.
YOU DONT GUESS WHAT YOU PUT IN THE ORIGINAL ARABIC COPY AS THE NAMES ARE IN ARABIC ANYWAY.wHERE DO YOU GET THESE STORIES FROM??
November 21st, 2007 at 8:03 am
Hi Cari!
I can’t argue your point about how sophisticated the system is. Although, in my case, when my daughter was born, it was not a clerk, but my husband and midwife fillling out the forms.
The one part of the system, I definitely feel could be improved upon, is that they hand write and hand copy all the documents. Leaving much room for human error. But, then hand written and non-digitized systems may be better until they eradicate more of the corruption here. It seems digital documents seem more easily manipulated than paper.
Nice to hear from you, Cari!
November 21st, 2007 at 8:10 am
Hi Ali,
You ask, ‘where do you get your stories from?’. The answer, simply, is from my own experience. What about you? Have you had a baby in Algeria? It really wouldn’t make sense that the Arabic copy would come second to the French copy, because Algeria’s first language is Arabic! Both copies came at the same time. I am not sure why anyone would have to wait 2-3 weeks for an original version when they are both produced straight after the birth. It was up to my husband, however, to register them and have the name(s) put in the little green family book, which only took a couple of hours.
Thanks for reading!