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Social Media Expert Calls For More Native Arabic Content On The Web, Which Is Now Just 1.4%
Published Jun 28, 2010
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A noted social media expert has urged Arab communities to use standard Arabic on the web that will let the outside world to treat Arabs as an integrated community and prevent the Arabic language from getting marginalised on the web through different colloquial versions.
Mohamed Elzubeir, Managing Director, Mediastow who is sponsoring the Click 4.0, the leading digital marketing conference to be held in Dubai from June 20 to 24, 2010, said: “Arabic is the language of government, media, education and businesses for many countries in the Middle East and North Africa. We were pleased that Saudi Arabia, Egypt and UAE are among the first to get internet addresses in Arabic, following final approval by ICANN. This represents the first major change to the internet domain name system since its creation in the 1980s. However, the real issue lies in using a standard Arabic that everyone understands in the Arab world so that our content on the web becomes bigger in size and usage”.
Over 20% of Arabic speakers have internet access, resulting in approximately 100 million users. Arabic is the fifth most widely spoken language in the world and yet, despite dramatic recent growth of internet penetration in the Arab World, only 1.4% of online digital content is in Arabic.
Elzubeir added: “Now names could be registered using the country's Arabic suffix. Arabic websites generally did not have that option because Arabic characters are written right to left, conflicting with Latin suffixes written left to right. This will enhance the web penetration especially amongst people who do not know English so they will be more comfortable using Arabic letters instead.”
Elzubeir said: “There is a paucity of native Arabic content in the web. It is not acceptable anymore that Arabs use English alphabet to write Arabic in their chats and social media websites. Adding salt to the wound, the lack of Arabic support in software is a big stumbling block in enhancing the Arabic web presence. We need to encourage people to write in real Arabic terminology and preserve the Arabic alphabet which will result in more Arabic content on the web.”
The quantum of Arabic content on the web is very low. This has created a vicious cycle, where the lack of content discourages people to search, which in turn de-motivates content creators from publishing in Arabic.
Standard Arabic is what brings the Arab world together, and what makes knowledge transfer easy between Arab countries. The usage of standard Arabic makes the published content understood by everyone in the Arab world and, most importantly, easily searched for.
“On the other side, colloquial Arabic will hinder the development of the Arab web by having 22 versions used on the web, instead of having one language used by 22 countries, reducing the impact of our language with the outside world,” added Elzubeir.
Regional and international organizations and government institutions agree that this lack of Arabic language material online inhibits the ability of Arabic speakers to effectively use the internet to gain information and exchange ideas.
For more information:
Mohamed Elzubeir
Mediastow
T: +971 4 3688444
E: m.elzubeir@mediastow.com
Mirvat Naba
Virtue PR & Marketing Communications for Mediastow
T: +971 4 2989598
E: mirvat@virtuemena.com
PO Box 191931, Dubai, UAE
Posted by
VMD - [Virtual Marketing Department]
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