[LINK] Arabic and the net

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

Egypt puts archives on Web to boost Arabic content

Mon Dec 14, 2009 1:13pm EST  http://www.reuters.com


CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt has begun making its national archives digitally 
available on the Internet in Arabic, having last month registered the 
world's first domain name in Arabic script.

The initiative to boost use of Arabic on the Web was launched on Monday 
following the domain name registration, which opened the Internet to 
millions of Arabic speakers put off by a language barrier.

Analysts say Arabic is just 1 per cent of Web content.

Egypt, the first of nine Arab countries to have registered so far, has 
adopted the domain name .misr - the Arabic word for Egypt and which will 
be spelt in Arabic script.

Minister of Communications and Information Technology Tarek Kamel said 
both initiatives are part of the country's push to boost Arabic e-content 
and broaden access to Arabic speakers.

"In the future this (digital processing of Egypt's National Archives) 
will be very useful when we have the Arabic domain really operational," 
Communications and Information Technology Minister Tarek Kamel told 
Reuters.

"We are now preparing the content in Arabic that really reflects the long 
history of Egypt in digital form," he added.

Internet regulator ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and 
Numbers, says the new Arabic domains are expected to start working during 
2010.

Technology services firm IBM and Egypt's government led the project for 
digitally documenting the National Archives to set up a database for the 
country's cultural heritage.

"Arabic content on the Web will be increased by 25 million records in the 
National Archive's database," IBM Project Manager Ahmed Amr Ali told 
Reuters, adding that the National Archives' website had a sample of 1 
million documents on the Web so far.

ICANN, which oversees Web addresses and records the names of their 
sponsors, voted to allow non-Latin script to be used in Web addresses in 
mid-November.

"Domain names will give millions of users access to Web addresses in 
their own language," said ICANN's Baher Essam.

"If you go out in rural areas and places outside big cities, the majority 
are much more comfortable using all electronic services in Arabic," he 
said, adding mobile use would not have risen so fast in Egypt, where 
about 50 million of its 77 million people are users, without Arabic-
language ability on phones.

Analysts said launching Arabic domain names was only a first step and 
Arab states should do more to help build up content.

"There are about 300 million Arabs and Arab content on the Web is only 1 
percent of the global content ... this is abysmal," American University 
in Cairo assistant professor Rasha Abdulla said. (Editing by Charles Dick)

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Cheers,
Stephen