Re: Arabeyes News Digest

[Isam Bayazidi <bayazidi at accessme dot com>]

On Thursday 04 September 2003 07:45, Mohammed Elzubeir wrote:
> That is very untrue and I take offense to that. Arabeyes is _FOR_
> serving the Arabic language user, and I am rather surprised that someone
> who has been very intimately involved with Arabeyes as yourself would
> say something like that.

I did not mean to offend anyone.. I am really sorry, and this is not my point 
at all.. 
Now, look at how things go in Arabeyes, the Arabic Howto is made in English, 
then translated to Arabic, the ACE features are in English, then translated 
to Arabic, the Site is in English, and will be translated to Arabic. The way 
I would expect it from Arabeyes is that things are done in the other way when 
we translate .. to translate from Arabic-to-English, not the other way 
around.


> It is unfortunate that we have not had the time to provide an Arabic
> interface to our website. However, please do remember that this is a
> primarily development project and not a news portal. Most if not all
> developers and technical people are going to need to communicate in the
> English language (it is the de facto technical _and_ business language).

Well, in our maindate, we target non-technicals as well as technicals, and the 
reason that the average Arab Linux user did not get near Arabeyes is that he 
did not find it friendly to him, in terms that it did not speak his language. 
I heard this from tens of people, Arabeyes existed because we believe that 
the Language is a barrier to getting Arabs to Linux and Open Source, and we 
are working to overcome this barrier, But within Arabeyes this barrier was 
not respected, or considered. I know I was in Core, and more than one time I 
attempted to make moves toward making the site in Arabic, and drawed back 
looking at how much the site is already rooted in English, having it in 
Arabic will make it more like a "Demo site" in Arabic were all Real valuable 
content are in English. What we need is not to make a site in Arabic, but to 
move Arabeyes toward Arabic.


> To suggest that Arabeyes is "about telling non-arabs about Arabeyes"
> could not be any further from the truth. Read over your own report that
> you kindly wrote.. where do you see the focus going?

I know, Arabeyes projects are for Arabs, This is why I am here in the first 
place, but what I am talking about is the PR strategy for Arabeyes, Having 
EVERYTHING in Arabeyes from the manifesto, to site, to Howtos, about page, to 
Arabeyes goals, everything is in English. So we are targeting English 
speakers more than we are targetting Arabs, remember that a great portion of 
the Arab world have French as a second language, and Arabic language is what 
lakes us Arabs in the first place.

PS. Again Mohammed, no offense is meant from this, sorry if any taken

Yours
Isam Bayazidi