Is my Argon Oil Argon Oil? An Arabic Translation Exercise

July 8, 2017 2:06 PM

I went to Morocco. I failed at reading about how to buy argon oil that is definitely 100% argon oil. So, I bought cheap argon oil. It's probably not 100% argon oil, right? However, to be sure, I'd like to know what the ingredients section of the label says. But, I cannot read Arabic. Perhaps you can? Difficulty level: Very, very, very, very tiny, very, very, very low-contrast font.

I tried so hard to take a picture of the label to make this part as legible as possible. Unfortunately, even in the clearest, closest pictures, it looks pretty challenging. But does anyone want to try?

Here's a very weird photoshoot of a little bottle of oil taking a tour around my apartment, to find the best lighting conditions for this task.

Note that I'm fine with the description in French--ie, the normal-sized, normal-contrast part of the label. It's the "composition" section that appears to be in Arabic (at least it's in Arabic script--I guess it could be another language that's written in Arabic script, but this is from Morocco, so I'm guessing it's Moroccan Arabic).

This seems very difficult because of the font size and color, but I figured Metafilter is the land of exactly this type of miracle, so I thought I'd try.

posted by millipede to Writing & Language (4 answers total)

It's difficult to see the Arabic lettering on your argan oil bottle, but the company's gmail address on the lower left is fairly clear. Have you tried contacting them?
posted by Iris Gambol at 2:52 PM on July 8, 2017

yeah, I can't even see the lettering. What you could do, is copy the lettering out yourself on a sheet of paper and post that here. I did this recently in when I was in China where nobody at my hotel understood English. I used Bing to translate a sentence, then I drew the characters in my notebook and showed them. They understood.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 7:15 PM on July 8, 2017

Alternately, you could look up the brand and hope for a website with a listed composition?
posted by lauranesson at 5:13 AM on July 9, 2017

Have you tried translating "argan" into Arabic and seeing if any of the characters match? Here is argan, here is argan oil. Since numbers are Arabic to begin with, 100 should read as 100, but you might try other words like authentic or total or pure.

(Important note: you are spelling it "argon," which is a gas; "argania spinosa" is the tree from which the oil comes. The tree is endemic to Morocco so I suspect the Arabic translation wouldn't differ in other countries.)
posted by AFABulous at 7:43 AM on July 9, 2017