Re: The Arabic Abbreviation Dictionary

[Djihed Afifi <djihedlists at googlemail dot com>]

> 
> But one problem remains, if we use Arabic abbreviations, and those who are 
> poor in English will learn the Arabic abbreviations the English ones, 
> wouldn't that separate us from the west? wouldn't that make those people lost 
> when they happen to have to face the world? I think that teaching children 
> better English is better than using Arabic terms that they understand..... 
> That will just make them less interested in English.
> 

Here we have to decide on how to handle abbreviations. Transliteration,
or translation? for example, for CD, should we say: سي دي or ق.م for قرص
مدمج؟

I am leaning towards leaving it depending on each term. Some
abbreviations are far too ubiqutous and it would make no sense to
translate them, such as CD itself probably. Surely, there always extreme
cases where we would be better off by including the arabic abbreviation
and the original in parenthesis. 

Another important thing to do is to make it easy for people to look up
arabic abbreviations if they need to, or make it clear in the interface
somewhere.

There are a lot of options, and we will have to do it the clever way :)

Djihed

PS. thanks Laith for discussing this issue very well. I think you raised
an important point in that we shouldn't do it the extreme way. There are
limits, and there are cases where taking too far may make it more
ambiguous.


> Anyways, why don't we just use CD? :D
> 
> Cheers,
> Laith Juwaidah
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