It is in the nature of translators to be invisible, to maintain the illusion that there are only two people of different tongues in a dialogue that requires three.
Yet without them, life in the UAE would be immeasurably more difficult, if not at times impossible. Their presence is everywhere, from the subtitles on the cinema screen to the quiet voice in your earpiece at lectures and conferences.
Here at The National we also depend on our translation team, unravelling documents and press releases, examining the local press and offering the most elegant version of an Arabic word into English. They have even been known to take a stab at interpreting Nabati poetry.
Which bring us to this gentleman, posing to a backdrop of Qasr Al Hosn probably around 1960. He is Abdullah Faris, the translator for Abu Dhabi Marine Areas, the off-shore oil concession headed by BP.
Mr Faris was originally from Palestine, but spent time in Oman before coming to Abu Dhabi. Not much more is known about him, although it is understood he still has family living in the city.
His responsibilities included the often sensitive negations involving the oilmen and the Ruler of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Shakhbut bin Sultan. As result, he appears in many other photographs and even some films from that time, although you sometimes have to look twice to know he is there.
Which is, of course, what he would have intended.
* James Langton
