About six months ago, when it became clear I would be writing more than occasionally for The National, I finally asked the company to make me a batch of business cards.

Business cards are big in the UAE. Especially when working to bridge the English-Arabic gap, which is real and significant when covering, say, the country’s professional soccer league, which is run and mostly played by Emiratis.

The National’s business cards come with your name and your job title translated into Arabic script. They also carry your cellphone number, and your business e-mail address, so people can get back to you. (Not that they often do, but “Arabic” numbers are readily recognized, by Arabs, who actually don’t use “Arabic: numbers. Yeah. Go figure.)

But I had always wondered how my name had been translated. If English speakers can’t pronounce it …

I had a chance to try it out on an Arabic speaker. While waiting for an Al Jazira winger named Abdullah Mousa to straggle in for practice, I was standing in the lobby of the team headquarters and chatting with a guy from Syria who was going to help me with translating my interview with Abdullah Mousa.

I had given the Jazira guy a business card, naturally, and while killing time in the lobby I asked him to tell me what my name looked like … and sounded like … from Arabic printing.

For me, the Arabic writing is, of course, indecipherable squiggles.

He pulled out the card and studied it. He said my title translated easily, perfectly. It is what it is in English. A fitting Arabic word for each word in the title: Senior … Sports … Editor.”

My name, however, required some concentration on his part.

He said that, in Arabic, there is no clear differentiation between “P” and “B” … so that someone looking at my first name might well pronounce it “Ball” or even “Bal.”

(Actually, I haven’t noticed this, in daily use. It is typical here, and in Arabic, in general, to refer to people by their first given name, and then add ahead of it whatever honorific seems proper. Thus, to get formal with Abdullah Mousa, the player, I would call him “Mr. Abdullah” and I would in turn be known as “Mr. Paul,” and I don’t recall anyone referring to me as Mr. Bal … but maybe I haven’t been paying close attention.)

The last name gave the Jazira translator some trouble. He had never heard me say it, so he sounded it out, which was tricky since it begins with a vowel, and if I understand this correctly Arabic writing has no vowels, just inflection signs that hint at the vowel sound.

He came up with … “O-bear-jer-gee” … which, in fact, is quite close to the preferred pronunciation of OH-burr-JUR-gee.

So, close enough. Great.

Now I know what my business card is telling Arabic speakers, and it’s close enough that I will understand if anyone ever calls out for “Bal Obearjergee.”