What the rhyme hides

Most shop signs in this region make the same three promises: trust, quality, and the year the doors first opened.

In Arabic, those lines sound wonderful. They rhyme. They fall into the balanced cadence of a proverb, the kind of sentence an uncle says with a slow nod. The language rewards a phrase with two matching halves, and a phrase with two matching halves feels earned even when nothing has earned it.

Put the same line into plain English and the music goes. Trust and quality, since a certain year. That could sit above a jeweller, a sweet shop, a car-parts dealer or an exchange house, and someone walking past would not know which.

The fault is rarely the writer's. Arabic is doing them a kindness it should not. It carries so much dignity in its rhythm that an empty sentence can turn up dressed for a wedding, and nobody is rude enough to ask who invited it.

The test I would run is a slightly unkind translation. Take the Arabic line and render it in the flattest English possible, no poetry, no help. The English is not the point; the flatness is.

If it still tells someone why this counter and not the one beside it, it is a real line, and the rhyme is a bonus. If it only tells them the shop exists and would like to be trusted, the rhyme was carrying the whole thing.

The customer stopped hearing it years ago. They have read that proverb above door after door since they were children.

The only person the rhyme still convinces is the one who paid for the sign.