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Any well-defined academic term is
inherently tied to the discipline from which it emerges. Nonetheless, academic
disciplines go beyond the knowledge of specific terms. For this reason it is
important to create a consistent and unified glossary of Arabic terminology for
the contemporary social sciences. This paper will focus on the terminological
difficulties of translating the concept of «Communities of Practice», which is
central to contemporary social sciences, into Arabic. It is the author’s
contention that any difficulties associated with the proper contextualization
of this term into Arabic is to do with the phrase «community» itself a concept
of central importance to the Western academic discourse. This paper shall
explore the development of the concept of a «community» and the theoretical
difficulties confronted in replicating the same meaning in Arabic. Following
that, this paper argues that the most suitable Arabic term to convey
«communities of practice» is Ahl al Mumarasa.
