Tag: translation

Oasis500 Facilitates Investments In Jordanian Startups Dakwak & Masmoo3

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Oasis500, the MENA region focused early stage and seed investment program, has announced two new investment deals for Jordanian startup companies Dakwak and Masmoo3 from its first Angel Investment event, and that the program has also signed a partnership agreement with Akhtaboot.

Dakwak, the startup behind a tool that enables websites to translate their content into over 60 languages, and which was previously reviewed here, received an investment from IV Holdings, resulting in a 300% increase in the Company’s post money valuation.
Dakwak was launched in July 2010 by Waheed Barghouthi, and was incubated by Oasis500 in March 2011.  Waheed Barghouthi is currently CTO at the company, with fellow techie Zaid Amireh in the CEO role.

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Dakwak: A Tool For Website Localization Into 60+ Languages

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DakwakDakwak is a new startup that was recently launched from Jordan that aims to provide a solution for website localization into 60+ languages.

The site makes it easy for webmasters to integrate Dakwak’s localization and translation service right into their sites; instantly providing their visitors access to content in the language they’re most comfortable reading in.

All it takes is a bit of javascript code that needs to be integrated into the site pages, and to flag the content that needs to be localized/translated; and the rest is taken care of by Dakwak.

The service automatically detects the country a visitor is connecting from based on their IP address, and changes the language of the content to the visitor’s language, switching all the text without breaking the design of the page; unless the visitor chooses to switch back to the base language.

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LiveTweeting, Real-Time Event Coverage With Crowdsourced Translation

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LiveTweetingLiveTweeting is a new real-time interactive web application that was launched as a tool for multi-language live coverage of events around the world, based around the popular micro blogging service twitter.

The way it works is that a group of people present at a certain event would tweet their updates covering the event as it happens, while on the other hand a number of multi-lingual twitter users would simultaneously translate and tweet the updates in another language. Both versions, the original and the translation, are aggregated on the LiveTweeting site.

People following the live coverage of the event (both original and translation) on the service are able to vote on the tweets they like by starring them. No user registration is currently required to follow an event’s coverage or to vote on the updates for it.

LiveTweeting

LiveTweeting was officially launched earlier today (Dec 9th 2009), just in time to be able to cover the Le Web 2009 conference in English and have its translation crowdsourced into Arabic.

The idea behind the service was conceived by Samer Karam (Lebanon), developed by Beshr Kayali (Syria) and designed by Maya Zankoul (Lebanon). Everything was put together over the span of one week.

# LiveTweeting

Meedan Cross-Language Dialogue Platform Launches Open Beta

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MeedanMeedan has officially launched its online service into open beta. Meedan is a non-profit social technology company which aims to increase cross-language interaction on the web, with particular emphasis on translation and aggregation services in Arabic and English.

Through its use of Machine Translation (MT), Machine Augmented Translation (MAT), and distributed human translation, Meedan’s goal is to increase dialogue and exchange between Arabic and English speakers primarily by launching a cross-language forum for conversation and media sharing, in an attempt to foster understanding and tolerance between the Arab and Western worlds.

Meedan means ‘gathering place’ or ‘town square’ in Arabic, and it reflects the service that was designed to stand as a digital town square for a linguistically, culturally, and geographically diverse community of Arabic and English speaking Internet users, coming together online to discuss current events taking place all over the world.

Meedan

Everything that appears on meedan.net is mirrored in Arabic and English; whether it’s the published headlines, the posted comments, or shared articles; so as to ensure an open two-way conversation.

Meedan was founded by Ed Bice in 2005 and incorporated as a nonprofit charitable organization in 2006.

For more information about the service and to try it out, go to: Meedan.net

New Monthly Arabic Entrepreneur Magazine In MENA Region

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Entrepreneur MagazineThe first issue of the Arabic edition of the well known monthly magazine Entrepreneur is going to be published the beginning of June for the MENA region.

The original English language Entrepreneur magazine celebrated its 31st anniversary in May 2008.

The magazine’s focus on the entrepreneurial market has made it one of the leading resources for starting and growing businesses.

The new Arabic edition is published under license from Entrepreneur Media Inc. by Sawahel Al-Jazeera ltd. a publishing and advertising agency based in Riyadh, KSA, and will be distributed in all Arabic language countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

Johara Aletaishan, Chairperson of the new magazine, said:

“The aim of our new magazine is to promote the entrepreneurship culture among youth in the MENA region.

We want it to be an interactive magazine which links not only the editors to the readers but also reader to reader in the region to promote business activities.

The New Magazine “Entrepreneur –MENA” will cover all the topics which may be of interest to the entrepreneurs.”

Neil Perlman, President of Entrepreneur Media Inc. – said :

“Entrepreneurial leaders drive economic success for themselves and their respective communities, and we’re pleased the first issue of Entrepreneur – MENA will carry this message to the region’s Arabic language countries. It’s invaluable for us to have the magazine’s message translated by Sawahel Al-Jazeera Ltd. to support young leaders in their entrepreneurial pursuits.”

From the titles shown on the cover of the first edition, it looks like it will be bringing some really useful content to entrepreneurs in the Arab region; with some local content, and some translated material; one thing I hope they’ve taken into consideration though is to not just translate some of the business articles as is, but to take the Arab business environment and context into consideration, and try to adapt these articles to the region.

# Entrepreneur MENA