At Arabeyes.org translation we often run into problems of standardisation. There are loads of terms being introduced everyday, and loads of old terms still incorrectly translated to Arabic. Analysing each of the english words and choosing an appropriate Arabic term is not an easy task. For example, consider the differences between [close, quit, exit, kill, terminate, end, finish] etc, what is the most appropriate for each between [ü¦ûLû-, û-û¦ûL, ü-ü¦ûTü-, û-üLûL, üãû û ü¬ü¦, û-üTü¬ü¦] etc . It’s all terminology relating to exiting an application. The arabic equivalents need to be carefully chosen to properly match their english couterparts and convey the right meaning. We can group a number of terms together under one topic to see their differences and analyase them seperately and collectively.

First, over the coming articles, I will try to find ways that enable us to reliably skim all the relevant references, including Arabic and English dictionaries and past uses in other software. In other words, I will try to standardise our standardisation process.