SACROUG (Gabriel).
The Egyptian Travelling Interpreter or Arabic without a Teacher for English Travellers visiting Egypt.
ARABIC PHRASEBOOK BY THE INTERPRETER TO THE BRITISH CONSULATE IN CAIRO
A rare introduction to the Arabic language by Gabriel Sacroug (d.1895), who served as interpreter at the British Consulates in Cairo, Jeddah and Istanbul. It contains a two-hundred page English to (transliterated) Arabic vocabulary, a short grammar of Egyptian Arabic and a wonderful selection of dialogues and proverbs. The latter is particularly valuable as a digest of proverbs common in nineteenth-century Egypt, with many curious and poetic examples: “The clarinet is in my sleeve and the breath in my mouth (ready for playing). Used to express ‘I am completely ready for business.’” (p.400).
Given the detail and depth of the book, it is perhaps unsurprising that Sacroug plagiarised other works. It is largely a piracy of E. Nolden’s 1844 Vocabulaire Français Arabe, with some of the dialogues adapted from Assaad Yakoob Kayat’s 1844 work, The Eastern Traveller’s Interpreter. Clearly unconcerned about his appropriations Sacroug marked each copy with his seal and even included a line warning against further intellectual theft, “All Rights of Translation and Reproduction are reserved” (p.[ii]).
Rare. LibraryHub locates just a single copy in the UK, at Oxford, while OCLC adds three further holdings, at Munich, Harvard and Biblionet Drenthe, Netherlands.
