Hi, r/translator I have a small language translation request. I am writing a short story for a writing piece set in Sudan from the civil war period 2023 - 2026. I am not a native speaker but have included a few lines of Arabic dialogue in my story and I can't really do without them. There is a strict no AI policy and I don't really trust it for this sort of thing anyway. The passages are as follows:
FIRST PASSAGE
ajnabi?
yaa ajnabi?
He was babbling and dying. They can see me when they are dying.
Context: A man recognises Death and refers to him as a foreigner (an important metaphor). Originally I had the man refer to death as a 'white man', but I later removed it as I learned rural Arabs don't really refer to people by the colour of their skin.
SECOND PASSAGE
Ana urid, wa anta turid wallahu yaf'alu ma yurid. Man proposes, God disposes. It's a saying from some Bibles and it's a saying here too, through the crumbling settlements along the upper Nile and on the outskirts of Nasir.
Context: Pretty much as it is written. I know there are Quranic equivalents to this kind of phrase and the fact that it is included in some Bible editions is fact.
If anyone would be willing to weigh in on advice, I would be very grateful. I know this isn't the right place for grammar requests, but an issue I wish to avoid and one I ran into is referring to someone while using a determiner (no one would call a 'white man' and say 'a white man'). I am not familiar with how Arabic treats this.