Q: Why should I consider localisation to Arabic?
A: Arabic is the sixth most widely spoken language in the world today. In order to make sure that you are talking to your Arab customers, clients, or target audience in the most impactful way possible, you need to speak in a voice that sounds familiar to them.
Example: In the 1990's, Alcatel dominated the cell phone market in Egypt. Now, in spite of exponential growth in that country's mobile communications market, you'll be hard-pressed to find an Alcatel phone in use.
Why? Nokia.
Within a few years, Nokia's devices with Arabic LED dominated the market.

Q: What is the market for an Arabic version of my product?
A: Of course it's always best to perform your own market research. Keep in mind, however, that the Middle East contains some of the world's richest countries who rely heavily on imports for goods and services. Countries that do not fall into the above catagory, like Egypt and Jordan have governments that have invested massively in technology initiatives in the past few years.

I was wondering if you have any PDA Arabic software. I know there is APOS, but I don’t think they support Palm OS 5. Also, there is a need for Arabic software for Symbian.
Palm OS officially supports a handful of European languages. They just added Chinese in the fall of 2003, but, according to their Globalization Manager, have no plans to produce Arabic. Having said that, Palm OS version 5.x and higher is closed, which means that any localisation or software development company will be unable to manufacture an Arabic layer to provide support. The Arabic support for Palm that was developed by the company mentioned above will only work with Palm OS 4.x and lower. Currently, Palm makes it impossible to localize to any but official Palm languages for OS 5.x and up. To try and change this, contact Palm Product Marketing and submit your request to add Arabic as a supported language. There is strength in numbers.

Q: Who speaks Arabic?
Arabic is one of the world's major languages. It is the mother tongue of about 300 million people, and the religious language of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims. It is an offial language in 27 countries. In 1974 it was made the sixth official language of the United Nations. Currently, more than 18 million Arabs live outside of the Arab world.

Q: What other languages use the Arabic script?
A: The Arabic script has been adopted by non-Semitic languages (with minor modifications), such as Farsi and Pashto (both Persian), Urdu, and Ottoman Turkish. Once an application has been localized for Arabic, the technology is in place to make subsequent localisation projects for languages written with the Arabic script easier.

Q: What must one consider when building or localizing Arabic technologies?
Software: if the source technology is not J2EE and/or Unicode compliant, there will most likely be significant localisation issues and might require porting code to.

Web: backend applications must comply with Unicode standards for localisation to proceed. Most newer versions of software (within the last 2 years) fully support Unicode. All J2EE software apps provide support.

Q: What is "localisation" and how is it different from "translation"?
A: Localisation is the process through which your product is adapted to suit the needs of a given language and/or culture (for example the Arabic language and Arab culture). Proper Arabization involves more than just the translation of one language into another. For example, terms like "hard disk" are just not translatable, and must be localized into a different term. We have established controls to ensure that the localized product will be universally understood in any part of the Arab world.

Translation is the process of converting text from one language into another, but does not necessarily take into consideration such issues as asthetics, and cultural or linguistic sensibilities.

Q: Technically speaking, what goes into localisation?
Localisation of Arabic must take into consideration these factors:

• Character shaping
• Character fonts
• Text direction
• Global screen direction and mirror effect
• Numerals and Hindi digits (if preferred)
• Neutral characters
• Dual keyboard

Though changes are for the most part language-based, they will likely include modifications to the product's code, images, help menu, interface, and encoding. Depending on the capabilities of the legacy technology, localisation may require some elements to be ported to a different technology platform.

Q: How much will localisation cost?
A: Every project is different. If you fill out our quote form, we will work out an initial estimate at no charge to you.

Q: What's the difference between your services and those of translators?
A: First and foremost, Alawy is a software development company.
While you may find translators trained in technical writing, it is our experience that it is far rarer to find a mastery of language and software development in one person. This is why we retain highly qualified Language and Technology Experts to provide linguistical and technological quality assurance for your project.

Q: Where did you get the name Zanuba, and what does it mean?
A: Zanuba Enterprise CMS is named after Zeinab bint Mohammed, the daughter of the prophet Mohammed, who was well respected for her knowledge and scholarly pursuits. The name Zeinab (Zaynab, Zainab, زينب) is the name of a certain fragrant desert tree that has deep roots. Zanuba (زنوبه) is its diminutive form.