Huff Post: According to reports, a well respected, high ranking Pakistani official has been rejected as ambassador to Saudi Arabia because his name, Akbar Zib, translates as ‘biggest dick’ in Arabic.
Yes, that’s really what it translates as. Neal Ungerleider over at True/Slant helpfully tells us that Akbar is a common Muslim name that translates to “the greatest”, and Zeb is a relatively common Urdu name (زب) whose meaning in Arabic is a crude word for male genitals.
Ungerleider has also put an Arabic article from Arab Times through Google Translate, with some excellent results:
Categories: Laughter is the best medicine
The story seems to have originated with this Arab Times article, and spread like wildfire throughout the English-language press from there. Let this be a lesson: Don’t believe everything you read in print. Sometimes, the press gets hold of a story and, before checking all the facts, goes off half-cocked.
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/02/12/the_akbar_zeb_story_too_good_to_be_true.
Dear Mr. Malik: What a relief to get this correction from you. Indeed that is why I had posted this news under the Tag of “Laughter is the best medicine”. In any case, this just goes to show that not only media jumps at and goes half cocked, but also that in general people believe that the ruling elite in the KSA are capable of anything. Also funny enough, it did increase my vocabulary of unpublishable words in Arabic. Had the name been “Zib” Instead of “Zeb” the translation would have been accurate. And while this turns out to be incorrect, there are similar stories of confusion in translations that are truly funny. It was worth a laugh anyway. many thanks
It is not Zib or Zeb. If the Ambassador writes it
Zeb then it is because his school people wrote it as such. It should be written as it is pronounced and that is ‘ZAIB’. That has been the
last name of the family for at least last three
generations: Ambassador’s father was Amirzaib and grandfather was Jahanzaib, the last Wali of Swat.
Yes the same Swat of Malala Yousafzai It has many meanings and I think the nearest as far as the name is means ‘Befitting’ or ‘Decorating’.
The Arabic language is called “Lught-al-Daal” as several alphabets in it have the sound of a soft D. What Zib denotes is pronounced ‘Dib’. It is stupid and vulgar joke someone invented to avenge a refused favour.