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Arabic and the Internet
TheArab world from Rabat to Baghdad likes to surf. The proportion of Arabs onlinegrew 30-fold between 2000 and 2012. Shaking off their old-fashioned image, 41%of Saudi internet users are on Twitter, the highest rate in the world. ButArabic speakers have far less content in their native language than others do.By some estimates, fewer than 1% of all web pages are in Arabic.
Back inthe early days this was because the internet could only support Roman scriptsso Arabic-speakers had to transliterate into a web language using a combinationof letters and numerals. But by the late 1990s that had been fixed. In 2000Maktoob, an Arabic internet-services firm founded in Jordan but now owned byYahoo, launched the first Arabic e-mail. Facebook added an Arabic-languageinterface in 2009. But content in the world's fifth-most-spoken tongue is stillpatchy, as is quality. Searches in Arabic often lead you to a forum rather thana well-designed website.
Thereasons for Arabic's lag are many. For international companies English is aneasy Common Language, while the fast-growing Chinese-or Spanish-speakingmarkets are a higher priority than the Arab world, much of which is still poor.Even in the Middle East, Arabic was not always the number one choice. Bloggersfrequently chose to write in English to reach a bigger
audienceabroad or to try to evade censors at home. Five of the 14 countries whereFreedom House a lobby group based in Washington, considers the internet "notfree" are Arab states; in no country in the region is the web fullyuncensored.
As moreArabs go online (and get richer), enthusiasm for creating Arabic content isrising. Beirut and Amman have become regional tech centers. Entrepreneurs arecreating Arabic e-books and search-engines, as well as Arabic smartphone appsto find local restaurants or a dentist. Some reckon more bloggers are nowopting for their native tongue.
ButArabic-speakers' "second-class experience of the internet" will endonly when users can navigate their way around websites in Arabic script too,says Yasmin Omer of Dot Shabaka a company that aims to do just that shabakameans network in Arabic. Since February, companies can now buy addresses thatend in "dot shabaka"—in Arabic script—rather than, say,".com" or ".org". International hotel chains are among thefirst to have signed up.
Arabic and the Internet
TheArab world from Rabat to Baghdad likes to surf. The proportion of Arabs onlinegrew 30-fold between 2000 and 2012. Shaking off their old-fashioned image, 41%of Saudi internet users are on Twitter, the highest rate in the world. ButArabic speakers have far less content in their native language than others do.By some estimates, fewer than 1% of all web pages are in Arabic.
Back inthe early days this was because the internet could only support Roman scriptsso Arabic-speakers had to transliterate into a web language using a combinationof letters and numerals. But by the late 1990s that had been fixed. In 2000Maktoob, an Arabic internet-services firm founded in Jordan but now owned byYahoo, launched the first Arabic e-mail. Facebook added an Arabic-languageinterface in 2009. But content in the world's fifth-most-spoken tongue is stillpatchy, as is quality. Searches in Arabic often lead you to a forum rather thana well-designed website.
Thereasons for Arabic's lag are many. For international companies English is aneasy Common Language, while the fast-growing Chinese-or Spanish-speakingmarkets are a higher priority than the Arab world, much of which is still poor.Even in the Middle East, Arabic was not always the number one choice. Bloggersfrequently chose to write in English to reach a bigger
audienceabroad or to try to evade censors at home. Five of the 14 countries whereFreedom House a lobby group based in Washington, considers the internet "notfree" are Arab states; in no country in the region is the web fullyuncensored.
As moreArabs go online (and get richer), enthusiasm for creating Arabic content isrising. Beirut and Amman have become regional tech centers. Entrepreneurs arecreating Arabic e-books and search-engines, as well as Arabic smartphone appsto find local restaurants or a dentist. Some reckon more bloggers are nowopting for their native tongue.
ButArabic-speakers' "second-class experience of the internet" will endonly when users can navigate their way around websites in Arabic script too,says Yasmin Omer of Dot Shabaka a company that aims to do just that shabakameans network in Arabic. Since February, companies can now buy addresses thatend in "dot shabaka"—in Arabic script—rather than, say,".com" or ".org". International hotel chains are among thefirst to have signed up.
