Localisation or Arabisation of software and interfaces is key to the spread of information technology in the region and software giant Microsoft is playing a major role in this in the Arab World.
Most of Microsoft’s products are now available with Arabic support and this has had a tremendous influence in popularising not only the products, but also in the creation of various solutions based on these products, benefiting the common man, who otherwise would have been left out of the IT revolution.
Microsoft is investing quite a lot of time, money and effort in launching localised products that help non-English users to experience the opportunities created by new technologies, says Assem Abdullah Hijazi, localisation manager, Arabic Language Product Support, Microsoft Middle East and Africa, in an exclusive interview with TradeArabia's Sree Bhat.
As part of its localisation programme, Microsoft has launched a portal that aims to draw the local community’s expertise to enhance the products’ acceptability in the market.
The portal invites users to send feedback to the company on the Arabic terms used in various software interfaces.
“We launched the portal in July and so far we have had good response and some of the feedback is really commendable. We are extending the timeline to receive feedback till October so more people can participate,” says Hijazi.
“This is the first time we have launched a community portal in the region. If we have a valid comment or feedback from the user, we can make changes.”
The terms have been translated by content editors in the region and the company takes regional dialects and usages into consideration while translating them.
Though the region’s business sector is bilingual, the Arabic interface is popular in many sectors. “We target mainly the public sector, education and home-users who may not have a good command of English.
“We have a large number of Arabic applications in Accounting, Health, Insurance and banking running on Windows. Anyone can develop Arabic applications or Arabic-enabled applications that run on Windows. We also support Arabic content on the Internet,” continues Hijazi.
One of the most successful initiatives based on Microsoft’s Arabic products is the e-government projects of various Middle East countries. “We are really proud of the achievements made by some of the regional governments using Microsoft products and tools,” says Hijazi.
He says localization of any product is need-based. “If there is sufficient demand for a product to be localized, it will be done.”
Hijazi categorically rejects the perception in the market that Arabic products have less features or are less stable compared with the English ones.
“This perception is wrong. We have a single executable file. You have the translation outside the engine and we do not touch it. When we enable Arabic language, we enable it from day one, we fix all the problems with Arabic, English, German, inside a single executable file. We do not touch the engine of the operating system or the application. When there is an error, it happens in the interface. Very rarely you will have a problem in Arabic as a functionality, which does not happen in English.”
The only difference between English and Arabic is the interface and some linguistic features in the core like handwriting recognition. More than 95 per cent of the features in English are the same as in Arabic, says Hijazi.
Excerpts from the interview:
Can you describe Microsoft’s localization efforts?
Each of the product teams across the company is responsible for localizing their own product. These teams’ localization efforts vary depending on the number of foreign-language versions. The most widely used products, Office and Windows, are distributed in 36 languages, but we also support the development of more than 40 Language Interface Packs, which cover additional languages and extend the benefits of Microsoft products to other communities around the world.
Along with developing the various features and technologies that make up each of these products, the product teams that develop the software also create initial names for the features they develop. The products are then handed off to specialists called content editors, who edit the software terms and strings to ensure that they can be translated into cultures and languages of a particular region or country without too much effort. At this point, the software terms are ready to be localized.
How does Microsoft engage with local markets in this process?
One of the tools we’ve had in place for the last two years is the Microsoft Terminology Community Forum. We use the forum to gather feedback and terminology data on specific product terminology, such as Windows Vista. In the past, we've created more than 70 product-specific forums, and based on the nature of the product or where we’re at in the development process, we might ask for participation from members of one of our Microsoft partner communities or from customers.
The Community Forum is very useful when working on specific projects, so useful that we decided to provide our customers with an additional feedback tool, one that isn’t project specific, but that enables our customers to give feedback on any term used in our products, at any time. The terminology search tool and the feedback tool are available on the Microsoft Language Portal.
Microsoft works with local employees and professional language translation organizations for the localization process.
For the Arabic language Microsoft works with four vendors across the Arab region in Egypt, Saudi, Kuwait and UAE. These vendors have language experts and IT professionals to translate from English into Arabic. Microsoft uses at least two vendors for each term translation, so it can cover more Arab countries and different dialog translation.
What is the purpose of the language portal?
We recognized that there was tremendous benefit for the company and local markets to provide easier access to information. The Language Portal serves as a single source for IT professionals, language professionals, and language enthusiasts to access the Community Terminology Forum, as well as to search terminology databases and other language resources.
The purpose behind the portal is to help these people do their jobs by providing them with access to IT terminology, software strings and translation guides, as well as the opportunity to share their points of view with other portal users. The Language Portal is available in 11 languages and includes language-specific content created by terminologists on Microsoft’s Language Excellence team.
The Portal is not so much as a tool to facilitate or accelerate our localization processes, but is more of a vehicle to get feedback from customers in communities around the world so that we can take the voice of our customers into consideration and ensure that we best incorporate their cultures and languages into our products. In the Arab region, this is first initiative of its kind.
What is an example of how feedback from customers and users has resulted in revisions to the product terminology in Arabic?
The level of feedback we receive for any given project depends in part on the country and the culture. Since this is the first edition of the Arabic community glossary, we are still receiving feedback that will be implemented across our localized products.
What is Microsoft's strategy behind localisation?
The localisation is mainly based on local market requirements where each product group is responsible for localising their products and building a business case for localisation. Some products such as the SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange do not need to be localised into the Arabic language since most of the IT staff prefer the English interface for servers. However, they will still have Arabic language support for these products.
How does Microsoft's language portal differ from other language resources available on the web?
The Language Portal makes Microsoft language resources widely available, and it also provides an online community where people can interact and share their points of view with Microsoft. Not only will the Portal help support local software developers and language experts, but it will also help Microsoft to create software applications that more accurately reflect the diversity of language and cultures around the world. We are very encouraged by the positive feedback we’ve received so far from language communities across Microsoft’s international markets and we’re looking forward to our continued work with these communities in the future.
Please provide an overview of Microsoft’s localisation efforts in the region and which products have been localised into Arabic?
Microsoft offers Arabic language support across its entire product portfolio including Office client, Office Enterprise, Office servers like Sharepoint portal server, Microsoft Windows Vista, Windows 2008 server, Exchange server 2008, SQL server 2008, Windows LIVE etc. Microsoft continues to translate and provide market specific services for the Arab region, starting with Office online, Windows online, Microsoft live, Technet , MSDN and others.
http://www.microsoft.com/middleeast/arabicdev/fonts/default.aspx, is a comprehensive site that provides information about Microsoft products and Arabic support including Office, Windows etc. Similarly, http://office.microsoft.com/ar-sa/default.aspx provides integrated online services for Office 2007 in Arabic.
Are there any limitations, either technical or language related in your localisation efforts?
On the technology side there is very little limitation because the core features are language independent. IT application features make up 95pc of a product and only 5pc is language related. However, we face challenges on the language side. For example, we are able to provide speech and handwriting recognition in some languages but in others we are yet to implement such facilities. We are investing resources to provide such facilities in Arabic and it will take some time.
How many people work on the localisation project?
Every Microsoft product development has an international team. This must have Arabic speakers. We started Arabic products in 1990 and there are many Arabic-speaking specialists who have progressed to good positions in the company. They are not only specialists in Arabic, but are also technical leaders.
We also have partners in the region who are experts in Arabic technical writing apart from freelancers. Our localization Research and Development centre is based in Egypt.
What are the new Arabic products on Microsoft’s drawing board?
We are really targeting to enhance the Microsoft language tools, grammar checker, spell checker, etc. We have already developed a translation programme, the beta version of which is now online. This provides for the translation of even technical articles. We also have launched three new Arabic fonts. - TradeArabia News Service