With two days gone, the "Arabs Without God" book translation fund has reached £613. Once again, many thanks to all who have contributed. This is very encouraging progress but please keep the donations coming in. The target is to raise £4,600 ($6,200) within 30 days.

The purpose of the fundraising is to cover the cost of translating the book into Arabic. The Arabic version will then be posted on the internet where it can be accessed by anyone free of charge. You can read more about English edition of the book here.

In the meantime, I have become involved in discussions about the translation itself. Non-linguists often imagine that translating is a mechanical process – replacing words in one language with their equivalent in another – but it's rarely as simple as that. It is possible to have more than one "correct" translation of a given phrase or sentence, and deciding which translation is better often boils down to a matter of opinion.

One example of this is how to translate the book's title, "Arabs Without God". I have already had five different suggestions from native Arabic speakers.
  

 
The English title, incidentally, was partly inspired by a classic book from the 1970s – Fred Halliday's "Arabia Without Sultans". Although events didn't turn out as Halliday had hoped, his book warned that Islamist ideologies "served to confuse, divide and divert" the peoples of the region and called for "a theoretical break with religion".

The five options suggested so far for an Arabic title are:

"Arabs without God/Allah." This might be misunderstood as referring specifically to Islam (though Arab Christians do refer to God as "Allah" too).

"Arabs without god." Less specific – indicates "god" with a small g.

"Arabs without a lord." The word "lord" (rabb in Arabic) is used in the Qur'an to refer to God.

"Arabs without religion."

"Arabs and atheism." This is furthest away from a literal translation of the English title, but it could be argued that it captures the main theme of the book. The secondary theme – freedom of belief – could be covered, as it is in English, in the subtitle. 

However, one translator has cautioned me against using "atheism" (ilhad) in the title, saying it has "too many negative connotations" in Arabic. I'm still unsure about this and would like to hear what others think.

I should perhaps point out that "atheism"/"atheist" has previously been used in Arabic book titles. In the 1930s, an Egyptian named Ismail Adham wrote a book, Limadha ana Mulhid? ("Why am I an Atheist?"), which was banned by al-Azhar. Much more recently, a book was published in Egypt with the single word Ilhad ("Atheism") as its main title.

Anyway, opinions about this from Arabic speakers are welcome (post them in the comments thread below). And please keep up the support through Kickstarter – every donation helps.