It seems like typing in Arabic letters became a hopeless case for many of us, high rates of slow arabic typing writers put this business on fire, high demand made the Technical Giants Microsoft and Google to interfere and develop Arabic Transliteration Tools following "Yamli" footsteps. [For those who are not familiar with the term, Transliteration is not the same as translation, it is converting the sound of the words from one alphabet to another, not their meaning, Arabic Transliteration example: typing "2oktob 3arabi" transliterates into Arabic as: "اكتب عربي". ]
Yamli were the pioneers in this business, in November 2007 they lunched their product as a webiste focusing mainly on tow areas Transliteration and Searching, several enhancements were added later: Integration with Facebook as facebook application, Integration with Google as iGoogle Gadget, adding Yamli Script to your own webiste, and now they also provide a Firefox Extension that enables you to do transliteration anywhere in your browser. on the other hand you can also train Yamli by reporting missing words in their mapping database.
Almost a year later, The Big G - Google - did their move and lunched Google Ta3reeb, as another online service, they added some features as On-Screen Arabic Keyboard, they also provided transliteration for Indic Languages. and the ability to add Google Ta3reeb to Google Custom Search Engines.
But Now Microsoft made a shift by moving business from the Online Services (covered by Yamli, Google Ta3reeb, and Onkosh) to Offline Desktop Application, by lunching Microsoft Maren developed by Cairo Microsoft Innovation Center (CMIC), [Microsoft Maren is developed to be a Windows Extension allowing users to type Arabic in Latin or Roman characters (so called: Romanized Arabic, Arabizi, Arabish or Franco-Arabic) and have it converted on the fly to Arabic script. Maren integrates with Windows and works in most Windows applications and websites.] This means you can now do transliteration offline while typing in Microsoft Word, Messengers, and browsers.
For me I still prefer Yamli, maybe because they have the largest DataBase making it easier to find the right arabic words while typing, but Microsoft Maren as offline application is interesting as i guess it's like Yamli in its first stages, so if Maren enriched their DataBase and enabled quick updates then that would be a great challenge for Yamli Team and Co-Founder Habib Haddad to keep their Product on.
Yamli were the pioneers in this business, in November 2007 they lunched their product as a webiste focusing mainly on tow areas Transliteration and Searching, several enhancements were added later: Integration with Facebook as facebook application, Integration with Google as iGoogle Gadget, adding Yamli Script to your own webiste, and now they also provide a Firefox Extension that enables you to do transliteration anywhere in your browser. on the other hand you can also train Yamli by reporting missing words in their mapping database.
Almost a year later, The Big G - Google - did their move and lunched Google Ta3reeb, as another online service, they added some features as On-Screen Arabic Keyboard, they also provided transliteration for Indic Languages. and the ability to add Google Ta3reeb to Google Custom Search Engines.
But Now Microsoft made a shift by moving business from the Online Services (covered by Yamli, Google Ta3reeb, and Onkosh) to Offline Desktop Application, by lunching Microsoft Maren developed by Cairo Microsoft Innovation Center (CMIC), [Microsoft Maren is developed to be a Windows Extension allowing users to type Arabic in Latin or Roman characters (so called: Romanized Arabic, Arabizi, Arabish or Franco-Arabic) and have it converted on the fly to Arabic script. Maren integrates with Windows and works in most Windows applications and websites.] This means you can now do transliteration offline while typing in Microsoft Word, Messengers, and browsers.
For me I still prefer Yamli, maybe because they have the largest DataBase making it easier to find the right arabic words while typing, but Microsoft Maren as offline application is interesting as i guess it's like Yamli in its first stages, so if Maren enriched their DataBase and enabled quick updates then that would be a great challenge for Yamli Team and Co-Founder Habib Haddad to keep their Product on.
