More than idle chatter: how Yamli saved Arabic online

[Nadine Toukan]

Sultan Al Qassemi, The National
September 19. 2009


A recent study conducted by the American University in Cairo found that 78 per cent of Arab internet users have never typed in Arabic. I have to admit that I used to be one of them.

Just a few months ago one of my entrepreneurship students at Dubai Men’s College sent me an e-mail inquiring about his future career path. The e-mail was sent in Arabic and I thought it was only appropriate for me to reply in the same language.

Simple? Not so. Although I have come to view the keyboard as an extension of my hands, I started typing my five-line reply at about 11pm and didn’t finish until 1am.

The reason for the slow pace was that, after years typing with the M and N letter keys in the bottom righthand corner of the keyboard, I could not with a click of the mouse switch to Arabic and adjust to the fact that both keys move up and to the right. Or the fact that there are three keys for the letter A in Arabic.

Frankly, for many people, most of the time spent “typing” in Arabic isn’t typing at all. It’s hovering over the keyboard pecking around for the correct keys. And, as if getting used to one Arabic keyboard adopted by the personal computing industry was not enough, in comes Apple with its own version; the English keyboard’s Latin B turns into an Arabic L on a PC, but transforms into “th” on the Mac. You get the point.

According to Google, Arab internet users constitute 5 per cent of internet traffic but only contribute one per cent of internet content. Also, much of the content generated by Arabic speakers is in other languages such as English or French, or relies on an innovative numerical system. In the past decade young Arabs created their own reality in cyberspace by adopting Arabic numerals that look similar to Latin letters to denote specific consonants for proper Arabic pronunciation. For instance, Ahmad could also be spelt A7mad and Abeer becomes 3abeer.

A senior official at a global IT search engine firm based in Dubai told me that much of the content being created in Arabic was in the form of social chatter. Arab boys and girls use this numerical system to flirt with each other. While that is not a surprise, traffic should now be directed at creating more appropriate content in Arabic.

This is where Yamli comes in. According to its website, the idea of Yamli was born in the summer of 2006 during the Israeli war in Lebanon, when much of the up-to-date information was available in the Arabic news portals and blogs. Imad Jureidini and Habib Haddad, the founders of Yamli, decided to bridge the language gap that was staring us all in the face by creating software that interprets Ahmad or A7mad and transforms it into Arabic script...continue reading on The National.

[Nadine Toukan]

This is an excellent Arabic interview with Habib Haddad of Yamli about entrepreneurship, innovation and excellence.

[abdelsalam akkad]

http://www.aramram.com/episode/420