The Language of Tomorrow: How One Egyptian Translator Bet on China 20 Years Ago

For a generation of Egyptians, China was once a distant country and Chinese an unfamiliar language with few obvious career prospects. Two decades later, the language has become part of a much wider Egyptian-Chinese relationship spanning education, trade, investment, diplomacy and culture. Ahmed Zarif was among those who saw that shift coming — long before it became obvious.

Cairo - There are moments when the future announces itself quietly, long before the rest of the world begins to notice. In Egypt, one such moment came more than two decades ago, when a young university student made an unusual choice: he decided to study Chinese.

At the time, Chinese was hardly the obvious path for an Egyptian student looking for a language with a promising future. There was only one Chinese-language department in the country's universities, at the Faculty of Alsun at Ain Shams University. Most students were drawn instead to English, French, German, Spanish or Italian — languages with established academic traditions and much clearer professional paths.

Ahmed Zarif chose the language that few around him were choosing. “I chose Chinese because I felt that this language had a future,” Zarif, now a professor of Chinese at the Faculty of Alsun at Minya University, told Bridging News: “I felt that China would have a very significant future, and that the Chinese language would have many more uses than those that existed at that time.” It was a decision made without the benefit of hindsight.

Zarif could not have known then how deeply China would become embedded in Egypt's economic and diplomatic landscape. He could not have known that Chinese companies would build factories along the Suez Canal, that Chinese investment would become a central feature of Egypt's development plans, or that a new generation of Egyptian students would study Chinese at dozens of universities.

He only had a feeling that China was going somewhere. Twenty years later, his career has become an unlikely record of how far that feeling travelled.

Learning Chinese is a big bet on the future

“When I began studying Chinese more than twenty years ago, there was only one Chinese language department in Egypt, at the Faculty of Alsun at Ain Shams University,” Zarif recalled. There was little enthusiasm for the language at the time. The established European languages dominated the landscape, while Chinese remained a specialized choice whose practical value was difficult to predict.

For Zarif, however, the absence of obvious demand was precisely what made the opportunity interesting. China's economic rise was already becoming increasingly difficult to ignore, and he believed that its growing international role would eventually create a need for people who could understand not only Chinese words, but also Chinese society and culture.

His first major opportunity to test that intuition came through a scholarship to China. He spent a year studying at Beijing Language and Culture University, an experience he describes as a turning point in his command of Chinese. “Being there made a very significant difference in my level of Chinese,” he described the improvement as substantial compared with many of his colleagues.

But China did more than improve his vocabulary and grammar. It changed the way he understood the language itself. Back in Egypt, Zarif began combining two worlds that would shape his career: academia and tourism. 

Working as a tour guide brought him into direct and continuous contact with Chinese visitors. The experience strengthened his spoken Chinese and forced him to use the language outside the controlled environment of a classroom. Teaching Chinese at university developed another side of his abilities, reinforcing grammar, reading, literature and the academic structure of the language.

One world taught him how Chinese was spoken. The other taught him how Chinese was studied. Together, they gave him a foundation for the next stage of his journey.

Zarif later returned to China to pursue his master's and doctoral degrees, studying in Shanghai. He used his time in China to travel extensively, visiting Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and many of the country's other major cities. “I almost visited most of the famous Chinese cities,” he said. He moved through its cities, interacted with its people and watched the country from close range as it continued its transformation.

For an Egyptian scholar of Chinese, this became a form of education that could not be replicated in a classroom in Cairo. The language became attached to places, people and experiences. And eventually, it became attached to another profession: translation.

When words became a bridge

Zarif began translating Chinese books into Arabic, initially working on shorter books and short stories. The scope gradually expanded. Political books followed, as did economic works examining the Chinese experience. Later came longer literary works and novels.

Among the Chinese writers whose works have reached Arabic readers through translation are Mo Yan, Shi Jicheng, Chi Zijian and Liu Zhenyun, alongside many others.

For Zarif, translation became a way of moving ideas between two societies. The translator occupied the space between them. A political argument written in Chinese could reach an Arab reader. A Chinese novel could enter an Egyptian literary conversation. An economic experience could be examined from another part of the world.

Translation would eventually take him far beyond literature.

From the classroom to the center of the China-Egypt relationship

Zarif was later part of translation teams working around visits by Chinese President Xi Jinping and the events accompanying those visits. He translated media conferences, results conferences and media activities surrounding visits by delegations from China's People's Daily.

Those assignments placed him alongside Egyptian and Chinese journalists covering the growing presence of Chinese companies in Egypt. Chinese and Egyptian media delegations visited major industrial projects being built and operated by Chinese companies, allowing journalists to see production facilities and the results of Chinese investment at close range.

For Zarif, the experience offered a front-row view of a relationship that was no longer simply diplomatic. “It gave me the opportunity to see closely the extent of Egyptian interest in the Chinese visit, and also the Chinese interest in their president's visit to Egypt,” he said.

The scale of the delegations and the number of media activities surrounding the visits reflected something larger: the relationship had accumulated enough economic and political weight to require its own ecosystem of journalists, translators, scholars, businesspeople and cultural intermediaries.

Zarif was now operating inside that ecosystem. The language he had chosen when few Egyptians were studying it had become one of the tools through which Egypt and China communicated with each other.

But Zarif's understanding of the Egypt-China relationship goes beyond presidents, investment agreements, and industrial projects. He sees a deeper popular connection built on mutual curiosity and respect.

“The popular relations and ties between Egypt and China are based on mutual affection and a great appreciation for our shared history and civilizations,” he said. Chinese people, he explained, have a particular appreciation for Egyptians because Egypt is recognized as one of the world's great ancient civilizations.

The relationship between the two societies also predates modern diplomatic ties by centuries. Zarif points to documented contact dating back roughly to the seventh century through the maritime Silk Road, with traces of that connection visible in archaeological objects, including Chinese ceramics and statues with Chinese features displayed at Alexandria's Graeco-Roman Museum.

For him, history is not merely an interesting footnote. It helps explain why cultural understanding has become an important part of the modern relationship.

He also points to what he sees as a distinctive feature of Chinese culture: its respect for the customs and traditions of other societies. He recalls, for example, the care taken by Chinese people to provide halal food for Muslim friends even without being asked. Small gestures, in his telling, can reveal something that diplomatic communiqués often cannot: how a relationship is experienced by ordinary people.

The Chinese language has changed in Egypt, and so has Egypt itself

Perhaps the clearest evidence of how dramatically the landscape has changed is found back in the place where Zarif's journey began. When he started studying Chinese, Egypt had only one university department dedicated to the language.

Today, there are more than 30 specialized Chinese-language departments across Egyptian universities. The language has moved from the margins toward the mainstream.

That does not mean Chinese has become easy. Zarif says the real challenge is not necessarily the written characters. With systematic study and an understanding of the rules, students can gradually master them.The greater difficulty lies in pronunciation, particularly the different tones that can change the meaning of a word.

For the new generation learning Chinese, however, the motivation is increasingly different from that of the generation to which Zarif belonged. They are not necessarily betting on an uncertain future. They are entering a relationship that is already here.

Where language meets economics

Over the past decade, Egypt-China relations have expanded into a strategic partnership encompassing manufacturing, infrastructure, logistics, energy, trade and technology. The transformation is visible beyond classrooms.

Zarif sees Egypt's geographic position as one of its greatest advantages. As security tensions in major international shipping corridors such as the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb increase transportation and shipping costs, Egypt's position connecting Africa, Europe and Asia becomes more valuable.

That is one reason, he argues, Chinese manufacturers are increasingly looking at Egypt as a potential regional base. The logic is straightforward: Egypt offers access to major markets while sitting astride one of the world's most important maritime routes.

But Zarif's argument is not simply that Egypt should attract more Chinese investment. The more important question, in his view, is what Egypt gains from it.

He points to the TEDA economic zone in Ain Sokhna and the Central Business District in the New Administrative Capital as examples of the scale of Chinese involvement, but argues that Egypt should use such opportunities to secure greater technology transfer, develop expertise and strengthen local capabilities.

The objective should also include correcting the imbalance in bilateral trade. In that sense, the relationship's future will depend not only on how much China invests in Egypt, but on how effectively Egypt converts that investment into knowledge, production capacity and long-term economic value.

Zarif describes this through the idea of “mutual benefit” associated with China's Belt and Road Initiative — a model he believes can support development without being defined by domination.

It has been 20 years since Zarif's bet on the Chinese language

There is a quiet symmetry to Ahmed Zarif's story. Two decades ago, he stood at the beginning of a road that few around him were sure was worth taking. Chinese was difficult. Its professional prospects in Egypt were uncertain. The country itself, despite its growing importance, still seemed geographically and culturally distant to many Egyptians.

So he made a bet. He went to China. He learned its language. He worked with its people. He travelled through its cities. He studied its literature and translated it. He returned to teach the language to Egyptians. And eventually, he found himself translating some of the most important encounters between the two countries.

Today, the language he once chose because he believed it belonged to the future is being taught across more than 30 university departments in Egypt. Chinese companies have become visible players in the country's industrial and economic landscape, while Egypt has become an increasingly important partner for Beijing in a region connecting three continents.

Zarif's career did not predict all of that. But it was built on the same instinct that helped shape it: the belief that China was becoming too important to remain distant. For twenty years, he has worked in the space between two languages.

In doing so, he has also occupied the space between two countries whose relationship has grown far beyond what it was when he first opened a Chinese textbook. The language of tomorrow, it turns out, did not arrive all at once. For people like Ahmed Zarif, it arrived one word at a time.