This week, Google announced a major expansion of its support for African languages, adding 15 new languages to its voice, typing, and dictation features on the platform Google Translate. This move will provide language access to around 300 million people across Africa. With this addition, Google now supports 11 out of South Africa’s 12 official languages, leaving sign language as a potential next step.

The expansion is powered by advanced AI and multilingual speech recognition technology, which learns languages much like how children do, associating speech sounds with written text. Google’s commitment goes beyond language translation; it aims to foster cultural relevance and inclusion.

Google is also investing $5.8 million in AI and cybersecurity training programs in Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa, benefiting over 14,000 small businesses and entrepreneurs. Furthermore, the company’s AI is being used for flood forecasting in East Africa and urban planning through satellite mapping.

These efforts highlight Google’s commitment to inclusive digital growth and economic empowerment in Africa.

To read more, please check out Google goes all in on African language, AI, skills.

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Although English is widely spoken in Arab countries, especially in the Gulf area, many Arab speakers feel more comfortable seeing restaurant menus in Arabic, especially for the global restaurants that have outlets in Arab countries.

As per the Dubai Gastronomy Industry Report published by Dubai’s Department of Economy and Tourism (DET), Dubai has 13,000 food and beverage outlets. Most of these outlets are luxury international restaurants, bars, and cafes.

Why It is Important to Translate Restaurant Menus into Arabic

One of the most important approaches for restaurants to attract guests from different cultures is to have the menus written in their native languages. As most of the restaurants in Arab countries are international brands, they have their own dish names, and in most cases, they are not in Arabic or not understandable for Arabic-speaking guests. Here comes the importance of translating restaurant menus into Arabic so Arab guests can easily understand the menu items.

What to Consider When Translating Restaurant Menus into Arabic

In order to translate your restaurant menu into Arabic, some aspects need to be considered.

How to Display Dish Names and Ingredients

While it is important that the guest can read the menu in Arabic, it’s also important for the restaurant staff, who may not speak Arabic, to understand what the guest has ordered. Therefore, it is recommended to provide the dish names in a bilingual format (in the source language and Arabic).

This way, the guest will easily understand what to order, and the waiter or chef will understand what is ordered.

It’s unnecessary to display the ingredients in a bilingual format, as the chef knows the dish’s ingredients perfectly. Displaying the ingredients in Arabic only is important so the guest can understand the dish components.

Items to Exclude from Translation into Arabic

As Arab Muslims comprise the majority of the population of Arab countries, it’s important to be aware of Muslim traditions when translating restaurant menus into Arabic.

Alcoholic beverages are forbidden in Muslim traditions. So, alcoholic beverages may not be translated into Arabic. It needs to be determined if alcoholic items will be translated into Arabic, kept in English, or entirely removed from the translated menu.

Also, dishes that include pork may be excluded in the Arabic version as pork is forbidden for Muslims. This will need to be determined and confirmed, as it’s not allowed in most restaurants in Arab countries to present dishes with pork in their ingredients.

Restaurant Menu Layout and Design

Arabic is a right-to-left language, so the menu layout should be prepared to accommodate Arabic. It is best to create a layout that has room to accommodate the translated copy. The Arabic dish name will be quite longer than the source, which needs to be taken into consideration during layout design, especially if the menu will be bilingual.

Some ways that the layout is adjusted to accommodate longer text is to change the font size or the dish name location may need to be moved/shifted.

 Conclusion

A good restaurant menu translation into Arabic is important to make it easy for Arabic-speaking guests to understand the menu items and ingredients. There are quite a few factors to consider when translating restaurant menus into Arabic. In order to perfectly translate a restaurant menu into Arabic, the Arab culture’s traditions should be considered and confirmed before proceeding with the translation.

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The Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding ceremony held on January 29, at the Ritz-Carlton, Qatar, took time to recognize the achievements of translators in several categories related to the translation of various genres from and into Arabic.

The translation of these materials into other languages from their native-authored language promotes understanding across cultures. The promotion of translations can help foster the translation of other materials, such as research, which can help facilitate not only worldwide understanding but also further development and collaboration —breaking the language barrier.

To read more, please see: Sheikh Thani bin Hamad honors winners of Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding

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The effect of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on humans has increased over the last few years. From making our lives easier with online search recommendations, voice assistants and facial recognition logins, to facilitating advances in healthcare, identifying pandemics, and helping alleviate starvation. Artificial Intelligence is the ability of machines, especially computer systems, to simulate and perform human tasks and processes. Specific applications of AI include natural language processing, speech recognition, machine vision, and more.

In this blog, we will talk about AI and the benefits of using and implementing it in the localization industry.

Power of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence offers several benefits making it an excellent tool that simulates human intelligence, including:

Reduce human errors: One of the advantages of AI is that it can significantly reduce errors and increase accuracy. The decisions taken by AI is decided according to information previously gathered and a certain set of algorithms. When programmed correctly, the errors can be reduced to zero.

No Risk: We can count on AI robots that are well programmed with a specific set of algorithms to perform risky tasks that humans cannot perform, such as defusing a bomb, diving into the deepest oceans and seas, flying to space, and much more.

Automation: AI can automate repetitive tasks without feeling fatigued, taking rests, or having breaks, as humans would need to.

Speed: AI systems can do tasks much faster than humans by finding and following specific patterns quickly. AI systems can analyze much larger datasets than humans and can perform complex mathematical calculations very quickly and accurately.

Artificial Intelligence and the Localization Industry

The localization industry is like many other industries that require human interactions and efforts. Artificial Intelligence can perform many localization-related tasks and processes faster, automatically, and with accuracy. Localization experts could utilize the use of AI in some areas in the industry such as Natural Language Processing (NLP), Machine Translation (MT), Terminology Mining, Speech to Text, and Text to Speech.

Natural Language Processing (NLP)

NLP is a subfield of AI that helps machines process and understand human language so that it can automatically perform repetitive tasks such as machine translation, spell check, text autocomplete, spam filters, etc.

One of the main reasons NLP is so important for businesses is that it can be used to analyze large volumes of text data, like customer support tickets, surveys, online reviews, news, social media comments, and much more. NLP can quickly help businesses analyze this data, provide analysis and reports, and enable decision-makers to make strategic decisions such as whether to localize a specific product, website, services manual, or marketing campaign for specific target markets.

Another usage of NLP in the localization industry is to analyze the source content to prepare a translation style guide and extract types of information for the linguists to process (i.e., person names, locations, organizations, etc.).

Machine Translation (MT)

Machine Translation is an automated translation performed by a well-educated computer installed with a machine translation engine. The MT engine provides text translations based on computer algorithms without human interaction. AI is used in the Machine Translation and Machine Learning subfields as the engine learns through high volume of source and target content. By using specific algorithms, the engine can provide the translations.

In the past, most MT products were based on algorithms that used statistical methods to try and provide the best possible translation for a given word. This technology is known as Statistical Machine Translation (SMT). SMT involves advanced statistical analysis to estimate the best possible translations for a word given the context of a few surrounding words. Recently, Neural Machine Translation (NMT) performs the process by attempting to model high-level abstractions into data, much closer to how it is undertaken by a human rather than the traditional statistical approach.

So, we can describe several types of Machine Translation as follows:

Rule-based machine translation (RBMT)

The earliest form of MT relies on linguistic rules and bilingual dictionaries for every language pair. A dictionary of the source language is used to select appropriate words in the target language. Syntax and grammar rules of both the source and target locale are observed, and the words taken from the dictionary are adapted appropriately (gender, grammar, word order, etc.).

Statistical Machine Translation (SMT)

In SMT, the MT engine uses statistical algorithms from analyzing existing human translations. It works by learning and comparing the source text with the model content. The translation is then generated based on the probability of occurrence in the target language. It works better for language pairs with similar word order.

Neural Machine Translation (NMT)

The NMT engine uses deep learning algorithms to train and educate itself and consistently improve. The engine functions similar to the human brain by using neural network models to create translation models.

Speech-to-Text

Speech to text using AI is a field in computer science that enables computers to recognize spoken language and transcribe it into text. Speech-to-text is different from voice recognition as the software is trained to recognize and understand spoken words and write the spoken text in the same language. Voice recognition systems focus on recognizing the voice patterns of individuals and taking an action (writing the text) according to the voice pattern.

Speech-to-Text can be used in several fields such as:

• Customer Service: Many agencies rely on chatbots that are based on AI systems to help answer customers’ questions. Since many users prefer voice chat, accurate and efficient Speech-to-Text software can improve online customer support services.
• Smartphone personal assistants, (Siri in IOS, Amazon Alexa, and Google Assistant), use AI-based Speech-to-Text systems to recognize the user’s speech and convert it to text, like creating a note, composing a text message, or searching the internet.
• Electronic Documentation: Many fields require live transcription of speech to be used for reference later or to generate reports. Some of these fields are remote meetings, medical services, online lectures, classes, and much more.

Conclusion

AI and its multiple fields and subdomains are increasingly being used in various industries and businesses to help improve and speed up repetitive processes. As the localization industry has many repetitive processes that take time, using AI has become a major demand in the industry. We can rely on AI to automate many human tasks to be done by computers with accuracy.

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We see colors everywhere and in everything around us. Since the dawn of time, colors have played a significant role in our lives, as they influence our thinking, emotions, and moods. Color symbolism is different from culture to culture, it can be also different in the same culture in different eras. In this blog, we will talk about colors representations in different cultures.

40,000 years ago, artists used to produce different colors and shades using a combination of soil, clay, animal fat, burnt charcoal, chalk, and crushed flowers. Color production by early artists created a basic color palette that consisted of white, black, red, yellow, and brown.

Ancient nations have used colors to represent their civilizations. Over the years, color has been used as a visual representation to distinguish between different cultures.

Power of Colors

As color representation is usually able to cause changes and evoke reactions, colors are more powerful than we think. Colors can be used to represent good and evil, beauty and ugliness, war and peace. As everyone has his favorite color, we have the power to welcome some colors and avoid others. For example, red represents love in some cultures, and it represents danger in others. Nations used this variation in color symbolism to develop and represent their identity.

Colors Cultural Representation

Colors became one of the most important and powerful representations of different cultures. Some colors represent good signs in a culture, and the same colors may be considered bad signs in other cultures.

• Red

In western cultures, red represents excitement, warning, danger, love, passion, stop, hot, spicy, Christmas (with green), and Valentine’s Day. However, it represents luck, long life, beauty, and wealth in Eastern/Asian cultures. In the Middle East, red represents danger, caution, war, bravery, and love. In Latin America, red represents passion, religion, sunny, and death. In Africa, it represents death and bloodshed.

• Blue

In general, blue represents trust, inner stability, calmness, safety, philosophy, and official business. In Eastern/Asian cultures, blue represents immortality, healing, sky, water, and relaxation. In the Middle East, blue represents safety, protection, and spirituality. In Latin America, it represents sky, freedom, infinity, and mourning. It represents harmony and love in Africa.

• Yellow

The color of energy, happiness, and danger. Yellow represents hope, happiness, visibility, caution, sunny, the warmth of the sun, and envy. In Eastern/Asian cultures, yellow represents courage and prosperity. It’s the color of luck in Thailand. In the Middle East, yellow represents nature, desert, wealth, gold, and success. However, it represents mourning in Egypt because the mummified bodies were laid to rest in gold masks. In Latin America, yellow represents wealth and religion. In Africa, it represents wealth and riches, spiritual purity, fertility, beauty, and the precious nature of life.

• White

White represents purity, innocence, goodness, angels, hospitals, and peace in western cultures. However, it traditionally symbolizes funerals in Italy. In most eastern cultures, white represents death, mourning, unhappiness, and misfortune. In the Middle East, white indicates purity, peace, and equality. Muslims wear Ihram (a very simple white attire) during the pilgrimage. In most Arab countries, White represents marriage, however, it also represents funerals. In Africa, it represents purity, cleansing, goodness, good luck, and festive occasions. However, it indicates illness in Ethiopia.

• Black

The color of nights, darkness, and shadows. Black can be considered a prestigious, intimidating, and powerful color. In many western cultures, black represents sophistication and formality. It also represents death, evil, mourning, darkness, illness, bad luck, and mystery. In China, black indicates good health and prosperity. However, in some other eastern cultures, it symbolizes mystery, evil, rebellion, and death. In the Middle East, black represents both rebirth and mourning, besides mystery, evil, darkness, and bad luck. In Africa, it symbolizes age, maturity, and masculinity.

• Green

The color of nature. In most cultures, the green color symbolizes grass, trees, and leaves, which is why it represents nature. In western cultures, green represents luck, progress, and environmental awareness. However, in some other cultures like Indonesia, it is considered a forbidden color, representing exorcism and infidelity. In Mexico, green is considered the national color of the country as it represents independence. However, it is the color of death in South America. Green has a strong association with the Muslim culture, and it is used in several Middle Eastern national flags as a symbol of religion.

Conclusion

Like symbols, colors can represent different meanings, activities, emotions, and cultures. Human eyes can perceive up to 10 million colors. From region to region, and culture to culture, color perceptions can be different. A single color may have different, even contrasting meanings around the world. Essentially, the color you use has a great impact on how people will view your product or brand. A wedding planner app with a white background, for example, may succeed in the Western culture, but it could be offensive in most Eastern cultures. Therefore, understanding colors and their importance to being culturally-correct when expanding into a new market is crucial to the success of your business.

Globalization Partners International has teams of Localization Project Managers worldwide who have years of industry experience in helping businesses achieved their localization project goals. For more information please check our case studies or contact us.

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Whether you are a small, local business or a large corporation, going global is a complex and dynamic process. One of the most important aspects to consider is to globalize the business brand identity to your target markets. Here is where translation and transcreation become important to your success.

What is Translation?

Translation is the process of rendering one language to another. The goal of translation is to deliver the meaning of the source content with a high level of accuracy. Translators make sure that tone, expressions, grammar, and sentence structures remain identical to the source language content. Translation is mostly used for governmental documents, user manuals, legal documents, scientific research, and business papers as accuracy is the top priority.

What is Transcreation?

The term Transcreation comes from the combination of the words Translation and Creation. Transcreation means creatively translating content. This is mostly used in translating marketing content where it is important to adapt the source content message so that it is well-received in the target market. Transcreation is an extra step further from translation, where the transcreator understands and feels the source content’s spirit and then renders it into the target language. It’s not a must for the transcreators to use the exact grammar structures or word-for-word translation of the source content. Transcreators are free to create unique and creative content that evokes the feelings and meaning of the original content, but adapts it to the culture of the target market so that it is perceived as if the content was originally written in the target language.

How to decide if you need Translation or Transcreation?

Transcreation and translation are considered the opposite sides of the same coin. Both aim to make the content accessible in a language other than the one in which it was first created.

Translation is well-suited for technical reports, user manuals, financial reports, legal documentation, and service-level agreement (SLA), where the content must be rendered from the source language to the target language(s) in the same way, structure, and wording as it’s written in the source language. These types of materials are written in a straight-forward, business-tone which do not require a creative interpretation.

You will need transcreation if you’re globalizing your brand name, slogan, marketing campaign, website, or brochures-essentially any creative content. The transcreated content aims to evoke the same emotional response that is triggered in the source language by adapting it to the culture of the target market. This includes keeping any creative remarks, expressions, feelings, concepts, and idioms in the source content.

Differences between Translations and Transcreation

Transcreation Examples

1. Coca-Cola

In 2011, Coca-Cola launched its “Share a Coke” campaign in Australia and later to 70 other countries. Coca-Cola printed the most common local names in each country onto millions of cans and bottles and added the slogan “Share a Coke with…” before the printed names on the cans and bottles. The slogan “Share a Coke with…” got creatively translated into different languages. It was not translated word-by-word. Instead, it was transcreated to make it more fun.

2. McDonald’s

McDonald’s decided to transcreate its global slogan “I’m loving it!” for the Chinese market to “I just like it!” because it is offensive to use the word “love” in public.

3. Mitsubishi Motors

Mitsubishi Motors had to change the “Pajero” model name to “Montero” in Spain and Spanish-speaking countries as it failed to make any sales when it launched the Pajero model in these countries. This is because the word “Pajero” means “the person who carries straw” in Spanish.

4. Hong Kong Tourist Board

The Hong Kong Tourist Board tried to have their slogan “Hong Kong: It will take your breath away” changed because it has coincided with the SARS epidemic. One of the main symptoms of SARS is shortness of breath, hence, taking one’s breath away could convey a negative context.

Conclusion

Translation is the process of rendering content from a source language to a target language. The goal of translation is to guarantee the meaning and accuracy of the source content. In translation, translators must make sure that the grammar, sentence structures, and author’s tone remain identical to the source content. Some minor changes can be applied to avoid social or cultural conflicts.

When it comes to marketing material like brand names, slogans, and advertisements, transcreation is required. The process of transcreation should be run by professionals who fully understand the product they are selling and are also aware of who is going to use this product. The successful analysis of the language, paying attention to cultural differences, and the appropriate use of idioms will make any transcreation project a great success.

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Video Game Localization is the process of translating and adapting video games to different target languages and specific cultures. The games localization process involves more than simply translating the game text. In this blog, we will go through the complete video game localization process, the tasks to be included, and how to calculate the cost for a complete video game localization project.

Importance of Video Game Localization

Video game localization has become one of the most important and beneficial domains in the gaming industry. The video game manufacturers and markets are continuously growing especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. As video games manufacturers are rapidly expanding their audience, it is important for them to get their games localized into different languages and cultures in order to gain the benefits of this growth.

According to WePC, the video gaming industry was estimated to be worth $178.73 billion in 2021, which is an increase of 14.4% from 2020. This is a marked difference to what was predicted in 2016 which forecasted a total worth of $90.07 billion for the same period – a 76.8% difference. Based on these trends, and the ever-growing popularity and diversity of games and their platforms, we could see a further acceleration in growth. Recent forecasts are estimating the video gaming industry will be worth $268 billion by 2025.

Quoting for Games Localization Project

In order to prepare and provide an accurate quote for a video game localization project, you need to identify the process and tasks that you will be following and conducting during the localization project.

Game localization can be broken down into 3 levels:

1. Basic Translation: Only the text within the game will be translated into the target languages (without cultural adaptation). The user interface, icons, images, and voice will remain in the source (original) language.
2. Intermediate Localization: The text within the game and user interface will be translated into target languages. Images, icons, and voiceover will remain in the source language.
3. Complex Localization: Full localization. All the in-game text, subtitles, images, user interface, icons, etc. will be translated and culturally adapted into the target language.

After knowing what localization level is required, you need to define different steps and services to include in the quotation.

Tasks and Services to Include in Game Localization Quotation

The below-mentioned services and tasks are what need to be included in a game localization quotation. It’s not mandatory to include all these services and tasks as it depends on the project scope, localization level, and budget.

1. Glossary Development and Localization: To guarantee translation quality and consistency, glossary development is important. The process starts with identifying and extracting key terminology in the game from the source files. The terminology is then translated and send back to the client for review and approval. Following review and approval, the terminology is imported into a termbase to be followed during the translation and updated as needed.
2. Style Guide Creation: A client-specific target language style guide establishes the standards for grammar and linguistic preferences, and to maintain style consistency across the project.
3. Cultural Correctness Assessments: Review of the game content for cultural issues to ensure the translation is “locale-sensitive” and culturally appropriate to the target markets. This would include a review of the game, user interface, and documentation. Items such as content, metaphors, color, sound, and icons are all reviewed for appropriateness.
4. Localization Engineering: Preparing the game content for translation, including in-game text, onscreen text (OST), user interface, subtitles, voice-over (VO) scripts, and documentation.
5. Translation, Editing and Proofreading (TEP): Translation of text, editing of the text by a separate translation team, and final proofreading.
6. Voice-Over: This step includes identifying the VO type, voice-over script preparation, talent casting, recording, post engineering, and studio time.

Voice-Over Types:

There are multiple voice-over recording options that will have an impact on the project cost:

1. Wild Recording: A vocal recording from a script with no video or backing tracks. It’s recommended for the voice-over talents to read the script through slowly from start to finish to ensure they have an understanding of how long your script will run.
2. Soft Time Restriction: The audio in the target language is within the same length as the source voice-over script, with +/- 10% tolerance in the audio length.
3. Hard Time Restriction: The audio in the target language is exactly the same as the source audio length.
4. Sound Sync: The audio in the target language is exactly the same as the source audio length and matches the silences.
5. Lip Sync: The audio in the target language is exactly the same as the source audio length, matching the silences, and matching the same lip movement.

Casting and Talents Selection:

In this step, you will identify how many voice-over talents (actors) are required, the talents’ genders, and ages, and how they will be selected. The next step is to select the talents and get them approved by the client by a way of the main 2 casting types:

1. Database Casting: you select the most suitable voice-over samples according to the character specifications and provide these samples to your client to select and approve which one to use.

2. Live Casting: you do a live casting session with different talents by recording a specific selected short script approved by the client, so the client can decide which talents they will choose. Live casting is more expensive than database casting as you will need to book the talent, studio, sound engineer, and equipment to do the live recording session.

Voice-over script preparation:

Prepare the translated voice-over scripts for recording by separating the sentences according to the game’s characters. Share the prepared scripts with the voice-over talents so they get familiar with the scripts before the actual recording.

Voice-over script recording:

This is the main step in the voice-over recording, as the voice-over talents will start recording the prepared and adapted scripts and the audio files will be generated.

Post-Production:

At this stage, the sound engineer has recorded audio files in target languages, following the technical requirements provided by the client. The audio engineer will edit the audio files and produce the final audio files according to the clients specifications..

7. Graphics Localization: Creating target language graphics by extracting translatable text from the source graphics, translating the text, and placing the translation back into the graphic, taking into account adapting text and images to be suitable for the target culture.

8. Integration: Adding the translated content, localized graphics, subtitles, and audio files into the game. After the integration phase, you will have a fully localized game in the target language.

9. Testing and Quality Assurance (QA): Linguistic QA is the process of reviewing all the translated on-screen text, subtitles, UI, voice-over, graphics after the translations have been integrated into the game. This function is usually completed by the project translator. During the QA review they will note any items that require fixing. Once the QA review is done, any required fixes or amendments will be applied in the language files. In some instances, it may be necessary to perform another QA review to ensure all fixes have been made. Functional testing should be a part of the process to make sure all actions and functions are working correctly in the localized version.

10. Documentation, packages, advertisements, and description localization: After the game itself is translated, a final step may be required to translate the game documentation and user manual. Also, the game package may need to be localized into the target language. The client may also request to translate the game-related content and advertisements into different platforms, hubs, or official websites. This needs to be taken into consideration as well when quoting for a full game localization.

Conclusion

Video Game Localization is a complex process that involves most of the different localization and translation project types, such as cultural assessment and adaptation, content translation, graphic localization, localization engineering, audio/video localization, and localization testing and QA. To guarantee that you’re quoting correctly for a video game localization project, you need to clearly understand your client’s requirements for each step.

At GPI, we can provide a comprehensive quotation for Video Games Localization, or you can contact us to work with your budget and timeline for any localizations project.

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The First Saudi Translation Forum was held in Riyadh on 2-3 December 2021. This forum brought local and international language translation experts under one roof and was considered the largest translation gathering hosted in Saudi Arabia.

Organized by the Literature, Publishing and Translation Commission, and took place at the headquarters of the Saudi Ministry of Education, this two-day translation forum aimed to address the main challenges that the global translation industry is currently facing.

In his opening speech, Dr. Mohammed Hasan Alwan, CEO of the commission, highlighted the importance of translation and the country’s support towards this industry: “Saudi Arabia has one of the biggest translation and publishing markets in the region, and we are exerting all efforts to grow the sector even more through nurturing and encouraging local writers and translators, forging international collaborations, and developing a supportive regulatory framework.”

Prof. Brian James Baer, President of the American Translation and Interpretation Association, and a guest speaker in the forum recognized the key issues of the global translation sector: “stagnant income for translators, and a lack of understanding of what translation is.” He emphasized that “language is asymmetrical”, and translators “need to manage this asymmetry” with creativity. He also pointed out the current limitations of machine translation when it comes to literature, and the need to use the technology wisely.

In addition, the forum engaged the audience with various interactive workshops, panel discussions, and the Kingdom’s first audiovisual translation challenge for students, beginners, and translation professionals. To conclude the event, winners of the “Motivation Challenge” took home generous prizes ranging from SR5,500 ($1,466) to SR20,000 ($5,330). The task was to translate short film clips about Saudi culture and history from Arabic into English, French, Spanish, and Korean.

To read more, please see: https://www.arabnews.com/node/1980841/saudi-arabia

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During the last couple of years, the concept of traditional learning and education has changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of being physically present in a classroom or meeting room, remote learning and education options have become readily available. It’s no longer mandatory to travel to another country to get your degree or attend a conference in another region. The importance of eLearning in a post-COVID world is driven by the fact that eLearning overcomes geographical barriers and the cost of hosting events while also resolving safety concerns.

One of the most important steps for a learning and education provider is to make the training material accessible to a global audience to a global audience. Millions of potential learners may not be able to access your content because it’s not written in a language they understand. Localizing your eLearning materials can overcome the language and cultural barriers as well.

What Is eLearning Localization?

eLearning localization is the process of adapting eLearning content to a specific culture and translating it into multiple languages for those cultures. eLearning materials need to be localized and not just translated or else they may not make sense in a culture.

For example, let’s say a company in the U.S. created a business course about behavior with vendors in the workplace. The course talks about not favoring a vendor or accepting gifts. However, in other cultures, that type of behavior is acceptable. So it wouldn’t make sense to simply translate the words—they must be localized to adapt to the target regions. Localization is necessary because it includes adapting every aspect of the course or learning material so that learners who speak different languages receive the appropriate information and can achieve the same outcomes as the original audience.

Additionally, getting the eLearning material and courses localized and translated into multiple languages makes it accessible to a much wider range of learners across the globe. For example, if you have a general course that could apply to many different types of audiences, you can expand your market and potentially make additional sales or gain satisfied customers.

eLearning and COVID-19

The eLearning industry was already growing exponentially before COVID-19 hit. Original estimates were US $250.8 billion in 2020 and are projected to increase to US $457.8 billion by 2026, which is a growth rate of 10.3%. When the pandemic materialized, remote learning skyrocketed globally. Instead of in-person training or meetings, many global companies shifted to virtual learning as it became the most viable solution. It won’t be possible to have a full idea of the impact of the COVID-19 crisis for a long time, but the eLearning industry will continue its rise in prominence.

The Future of eLearning Localization and COVID-19

The current concept of safe return to classrooms allows us the opportunity to rethink the ways we operate with learning. As hundreds of millions of students around the world stayed at home and received their education remotely during COVID-19, it made students and teachers more familiar with online learning, training tools, and platforms. The familiarity gave a lot of higher education institutions and universities the opportunity to enhance their remote learning programs and platforms to target learners from all over the globe. To achieve the most value from this new strategy, it became essential to localize eLearning courses and material into the target markets.

Conclusion

Like almost every industry, the learning and education industry, as well as businesses, have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. eLearning localization became one of the most important solutions in overcoming the effects of the pandemic. Around the globe, the impact of COVID-19 will continue to be seen, and people will continue to adapt to the “new normal.” The eLearning industry will continue its rise to prominence as it proved its value and feasibility during the pandemic.

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Whilst Arabic is one of the most spoken languages in the world, it is one of the most complex languages to master and is a challenge to translate into as Arabic is one of the Semitic languages.

Unlike English, Arabic is written and read from right to left (RTL language also known as bidirectional language). In addition to this, you may need to consider cultural differences for the variety of Arabic markets, as the Arabic language has many different styles as it is spoken in more than 22 countries with different dialects.

In this blog, we will point out the language differences between English and Arabic.

Language Origin and Culture

The Arabic language is a unique and poetic language that has unique expressions that are used in everyday conversations and writings that do not have equivalent translations in English.

• Arabic: ما شاء الله (Masha’a Allah)

            English: Does not have English equivalent

            Usage: To express amazement, thankfulness, gratitude (without grudge or jealousy)

• Arabic: سلام (Salam)

            English: Peace

            Usage: According to the context, it may be used in many ways, from “Peace”, or a greeting “Hello- Bye”, or an adjective “Safe”

Arabic Writing Style

Arabic is written using the Arabic Script, it is the same writing script for Persian, Urdu, Dari, Kashmiri, Kurdish, Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto, Urdu, Rohingya, and Uyghur languages. There are no uppercase and lowercase letters in Arabic, though shapes of letters usually vary depending on whether they are in an initial, middle, or final position in a word. Arabic words are written in a cursive style, which means most of the letters are written in slightly different forms according to whether they stand alone or are joined to a following, or preceding letter.

Arabic Sentence Structure

In Arabic, there are 2 types of sentence structures: Nominal sentences and Verbal sentences.

1-    Nominal Sentence:

Nominal sentences begin with a noun or a pronoun. Nominal sentences have 2 parts: subject (مبتدأ) and predicate (خبر). In some cases, when the nominal sentences are about being, i.e. if the verb of the sentence is “to be” in English, the sentence can be well understood without a verb, unlike English sentences.

For example:

English: The weather is hot.

Arabic: الجو حار (weather hot)

In most cases when the nominal sentence is not about being, it should include a verb to be well understood.

For example:

English: The boy is playing.

Arabic: الولد يلعب (The boy play)

Like English, Arabic sentences can be longer to contain an object to be Subject-Verb-Object (SVO).

For example:

English: The boy is playing football.

Arabic: الولد يلعب الكرة

Subject: الولد – Verb: يلعب – Object: الكرة

2-    Verbal Sentence:

A verbal sentence is a sentence that starts with a verb and a subject follows, and then an object (VSO). The subject can be a noun, a pronoun, a demonstrative, or a relative clause.

The defining property of a verbal sentence is that the verb precedes the subject. There is more than one possibility for verbal sentences in the presence of an object, an adverb, a prepositional phrase, etc.

For example:

Arabic: يقرأ الولدُ الكتابَ (reads the boy the book)

English: The boy reads the book.

Verb: يقرأ – Subject: الولدُ – Object: الكتابَ

Verb-Subject Gender Agreement:

Unlike English, the verb gender must agree with the subject gender. If the subject is feminine, the verb must be in the feminine form by adding the feminine mark to the verb depending on the sentence tense. For sentences in the past tense, the feminine mark (ت) should be added to the end of the verb. For sentences in the present or future tenses, the feminine mark (تـ) should be added to the beginning of the verb. This applies to both types of sentences (nominal and verbal).

For example:

Present:

Nominal: البنت تقرأ الكتاب

Verbal: تقرأ البنت الكتاب

Future:

Nominal: البنت سوف تقرأ الكتاب

Verbal: سوف تقرأ البنت الكتاب

Past:

Nominal: البنت قرأت الكتاب

Verbal: قرأت البنت الكتاب

Numbers in Arabic

Although Arabic is written and read from right to left, Arabic numerals are written and read left to right, just like in English. Both Hindi and Arabic numerals are used in Arabic depending on the target audience and region. Some countries use Hindi numerals in the official writings and others use Arabic numerals.

Arabic Dialects

As the Arabic language is officially used in more than 22 countries, it has been adapted and can be written in different dialects depending on the country or region. The most used Arabic dialect that is written and understood across all the Arabic speakers is the Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Modern Standard Arabic is a universal form of Arabic one of the 6 official languages of the United Nations. So, when it comes to translation into Arabic, it is most likely to be into MSA, unless this is specifically requested.

Some of the major Arabic dialects are:

Egyptian Arabic: The most widely spoken Arabic dialect, not only in Egypt but across the Middle East and North Africa. It uses much of the same vocabulary found in MSA with some minor differences in pronunciation of certain words and letters.

Levantine Arabic: The second most spoken Arabic dialect after Egyptian Arabic. It is spoken in Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria.

Gulf Arabic: Spoken in the Persian Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates. It is made up of several dialects which differ in vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.

Maghrebi Arabic: Spoken in Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Western Sahara, Libya, and Mauritania. This dialect is distinct from MSA, that it has its name – Darija (الدارجة). The Maghrebi dialect is made up of several other dialects such as Moroccan Arabic, Algerian Arabic or Tunisian Arabic.

Although Modern Standard Arabic is a written and scholarly standard, it is not the version people speak in their everyday lives. Spoken Arabic dialects and MSA have a few differences, for example:

• Spoken Arabic has a simpler grammatical structure
• Some letters are differently pronounced in Spoken Arabic based on the dialect
• Some dialects have some expressions that cannot be understood in some regions. Such expressions can be written in MSA to be understood across all the Arabic regions

Conclusion

Translation into Arabic requires special preparation and treatment before starting the translation. Arabic translators should be aware of the target audience and the Arabic style before proceeding with the translation. Also, a Quality Assurance review is important and should be conducted after the translation is fully complete, to ensure the Arabic content style is consistent across the translated material and is suitable for the target audience/market.

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