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Proposal: Arabic Language

Is it possible/feasible/allowed for a single tag to be in two languages? Or should the tags be in either English or Arabic?

Spanish SE's tags are in Spanish, hence, Arabic SE's tags should be in Arabic only?

هل يمكن كتابة الكلمات الدلالية باللغتين العربية و الانجليزية، أم انه من الواجب استخدام لغة واحدة فقط؟

Example: Grammar - قواعد

I tried using [tag:] but Arabic text breaks the format.

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  • 1
    I guess we would make the English version a synonym of the Arabic: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/18061947#18061947
    – Sammaye
    Oct 8 '14 at 20:55
  • 1
    can we make tags with two languages? Just like: Grammar-قواعد?
    – F. Julian
    Oct 9 '14 at 6:34
  • 1
    @f.julian this is what I meant. Tags in two langs.
    – Omar
    Oct 9 '14 at 7:27
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    @F.Julian the problem is searching for these tags, the search works by a "LIKE" in SQL I would think and that is not aware of multiple collations as such it would make it difficult at best
    – Sammaye
    Oct 9 '14 at 10:40
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The best solution is to create tags in both languages;

  1. For those who are profissional in Arabic, they should use the Arabic tags, unless they will include translation to the question. In this case, they should include the English & the Arabic tags.

  2. For the learners or those who don't know Arabic, they should mention the English tags.

Benefits:
Both learners and native users can search questions using the tags easily, especially the learners, who can search using the English tags (which should contain either English questions or bilingual ones).

Issues:
I am not sure if we can create that number of tags.

4
  • That is a nice though you're having there. I think we can create that number of tags. But we need to be able to add twice as many tags to bi-lingual questions than to Arabic questions. I think there is a limit to the number of tags to a question. However, this does not mean that this limit could not be changed and adjusted to our needs. Oct 9 '14 at 14:11
  • Yes, exactly, it is not a deal. In general, Each bilingual question does't need more than 6-8 tags for sure. Like grammar قواعدquestions, those need only 2. and so on. :)
    – F. Julian
    Oct 9 '14 at 14:15
  • Is grammar نحو or قواعد? I know it as نحو (naḥw) ... (This is what I meant when I wrote in my answer that we need to consider and decide very carefully which tags we choose.) Oct 9 '14 at 14:26
  • 3
    نحو & قواعد are the same. We can consider only one of them. Anyways, native ppl can always edit the tags and pick the correct ones ;). For the difference, check this: alshref.com/vb/t19668.html
    – F. Julian
    Oct 9 '14 at 15:06
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The tags should be in Arabic, as for the english tags they should be made synonyms and merged into the Arabic tag, the Arabic tag of course being the main/master tag.

2

That is a very good question. I guess, the primary function of the tags is

  1. organisation, and
  2. searching.

So, what we perhaps should do is having a look into the search function of stackexchange sites and see how it works.

In any case, the search-funtion is a good argument for having bi-lingual tags, as our users will probably search in both languages.

But, we should carefully consider which tags to use and choose the right terms. Both Arabic and English are rich in terminology. We should pick the terms used as tags carefully.


Update:

I think the Spanish example is misleading. The Spanish word for "grammar" is "gramática". I am guessing that at least most other terms/tags are akin to the English words, so it does not make a big difference whether to have tags in Spanish or in English on that site. In Arabic, however, the situation is entirely different. Users arriving here will not know what "grammar" means in Arabic. Even advanced learner's probably won't. I think asking either-or is a false approach so that there is effectively no way around having bi-lingual tags.

And if Sammaye should be right, that this is difficult to implement, then we need to find some sort of way still make it happen.

2

@Mujahids proposal is easily the best.

I am a Western learner; I come for the user group some of the answers are attempting to accommodate.

I am not fond of duplicating tags for the sole purpose of accomodating to my user group, some reasons are:

  • duplicate content
  • duplicate abstracts
  • double the work to manage
  • double the work to moderate

If this site gets out of commitment it will already have a number of moderation challenges to overcome. We don't need to add more by applying duplicate tag management to those moderators.

Instead when a user like myself enters an English tag it should actually link directly to the Arabic edition when posted. The abstract of that tag should then have both Arabic and English editions. Most likely the abstract displayed when hovering over being English.

This has the benefit that someone can put in Pronounciation and get back: الصوتيات

(the parent tag might be definite like that, not sure, I guess that is another dicussion for another time)

This means that they can also search for the English "Pronounciation" and Arabic "Phonics" (I assume that the two would be merged since they are inter-changeable) equally, for example: https://stackoverflow.com/tags/mongodb/synonyms one tag I frequent on SO. If you click its synonyms you will get the parent tag.

This also has the benefit that I do not need to try and use rtl Arabic script on a ltr UK keyboard and OS everytime I want to search for some Arabic questions. Instead I can just put in one of the English synonyms and get back the Arabic parent tag straight away.

This also provides the benefit that naive Arabic speakers who are willing to help learners and natives alike do not need to have two question lists open at the same time. They can get their feed all in one list, making it much easier for them to answer and keep ontop of their own activity, etc etc.

So yeah, @Mujahids has got my vote currently.

In reference to tag creation number: SO, whose tag count is stupidly high, is currently sat on 40,572. I would think that duplicating Arabic and English tags would most likely result in far less than this number, as such I think it is okay to assume we can go through with @F.Julian's idea.

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