Two years ago Dutch journalist and Arabist Joris Luyendijk (1971) wrote a book about how correspondents (and the media!) in the Middle-East contribute to the strange and wrong image the Western world has about ‘the Arabic World’. But I won’t go into that now. For anybody who’s interested in mass-media and journalism: read the book!

What I will go into is the idea Luyendijk proposed to translate Arabic names into Dutch for the Dutch television/newspaper. He said that the Arabic names sound very exotic, and make the words they represent larger than life, thus contributing to the wrong image of the Arabic World. To reduce this wrong image, the names should be translated, he says.

Here is a list of how that will go for newspapers:
* Life – Al-Hayat;
* The Middle-East – Sharq Al-Awsat
* The Pyramids – Al-Ahram

For news companies:
* The Island – Al Jazeera
* The Lighthouse – Al-Manara
* The Future – Al-Mustaqbal

And to maybe take away the fear:
* Devotion – Hamas
* The Party of God – Hezbollah
* The Base – Al-Qaeda

Would this apply to logos/flags as well? I quickly made some examples to see if it works. See for yourself!