Read Sindbad The Sailor: Three Adventures in Arabic

In Interlinear, the Arabic text is followed by an English translation below each word or phrase.

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What is Sindbad The Sailor: Three Adventures about?

Sindbad The Sailor: Three Adventures (السندبادُ البحريُّ: ثلاثةُ مغامراتٍ) is an Interlinear translation of the introduction and the first three tales of Sindbad, an adventurous merchant from Baghdad who travels the seas encountering magical monsters and engaging in fantastic adventures.

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The most famous Arabic mythical hero in Interlinear

Sindbad the Sailor comes from a famous Arabic collection of fairytales: One Thousand and One Nights. It appeared in this Arabic collection of tales rather late, only in 17th and 18th century collections, but Sindbad's stories themselves are set during the Abbasid Caliphate (8-9th centuries). The stories of Sindbad draw from a long tradition of legends and local myths, and are also inspired by the experiences of 13th century Arab mariners who braved the Indian Ocean.

How was this Arabic translation made?

Literal but understandable

In this Arabic bilingual book, we translate words one by one and literally except in cases where this would harm understanding. E.g. here (reading right to left):

أَرَادَarad> Wanted
تُجَّارٌtujaar traders
المَرْكَبَalmarkaba of the boat
السُّفَرُ،alsufaru to travel

The natural word order would probably be somewhat different in English but that makes no difference: the phrase is still perfectly understandable so we keep it translated very literally.

We may also sometimes add implied words in English in brackets to help facilitate literal translation, like in this phrase:

إِنَّina So
اِسْمَكَaismaka your name [is the same]
مِثْلmithl as
اِسْمِي،aismi my name

The words "is the same" are not actually in the Arabic text but they are sort of implied, thus we add the English words in brackets to make the English more readable.

However, it would make little sense to translate Arabic expressions word-by-word. In such cases, we translate multiple words together as a single expression.

Comes with optional transcription

The default version of this e-book includes a third line on top of the Arabic words with romanization (a transcription of the Arabic text into Latin letters). The transcription is only indicative (not fully phonetic) but this helps learners who are not yet familiar with reading longer Arabic texts. Moreover, we also make available a separate version of the text without transcription for those that prefer to read it only in Arabic letters.

Arabic vowels (tashkīl) marked!

While vowels are normally not written in Arabic, we have added vowel marks (which are called tashkīl, of which we focused on adding ḥarakāt) to nearly all of the words in the Arabic text to help learners read and pronounce them in Arabic correctly.

Free audiobook included

To make the book even more learner-friendly, we asked a native Arabic speaker Dalia Ebrahim to make an in-house recording of the entire text of the book as an audiobook. The audiobook comes as a collection of mp3 audio files, which can be downloaded and played on your digital device. Best of all: the audiobook is free for all readers of the e-book!

Translated by Justyna Dykas, reviewed by Ashraf Ali.

Audio recorded by Dalia Ebrahim.

This Interlinear book includes:

  • 88 standard-book pages
  • over four thousand translated words and expressions
  • original text (including tashkīl vowel marks) in a big clearly-readable Arabic font, with optional transcription to Latin letters & aligned Interlinear translations
  • a separately available Arabic-only version of the text to get additional practice after having read the text with the Interlinear translation
  • files in the printable or electronically readable PDF format, as well as MOBI and EPUB format files for Kindles and other e-book readers, tablets, and phones - all immediately available to download
  • a free home-made Arabic audiobook recorded by a native speaker Dalia Ebrahim for Interlinear Books!

Available to order right now.

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