MULTILINGUAL COMPUTING WITH ARABIC AND ARABIC TRANSLITERATION Arabicizing Windows Applications to Read and Write Arabic & Solutions for the Transliteration Quagmire Faced by Arabic-Script Languages
al-Husein N. Madhany1 The University of Chicago anm@uchicago.edu Abstract2 A major obstacle in the teaching of Arabic as a foreign language has been the dearth of technological resources available for both teacher and student. This paper is the first step in filling this niche by providing the average computer user the ability to access Arabic on the Internet and to word process in Arabic and Arabic transliteration systems, irrespective of their current computer operating system and software versions. The ability to word process in Arabic and Arabic transliteration just as one would in English is now available in universal technologies such as Microsoft Word, thus obviating the need to purchase a stand-alone Arabic word processor or utilize a distinct Arabic transliteration program or font. Thus universal and comprehensive access to Unicode-compliant Arabic and Arabic transliteration fonts on the home user's word processor, e-mail programs, and the Internet—if utilized judiciously—can 1) quicken the path to proficiency for non-native learners of Arabic; 2) widen the distribution of Arabicbased scholarship among universities around the world; and 3) expedite the production of said scholarship by scholarly publishing presses.
Introduction This paper is technical in nature.3 It provides detailed instructions for enabling reading and typing Arabic and Arabic transliteration capabilities within PCs running: all Microsoft Windows operating system versions, the most common versions of Microsoft Word and WordPerfect, and Internet web browsers such as Netscape Navigator, Mozilla, and Internet Explorer.4 This paper also discusses useful, time-tested hints and resources for typing and editing Arabic and Arabic transliteration within Windows and the Web including: enabling the free On-Screen Arabic Keyboard, installing the free Arabic Visual Keyboard, purchasing Arabic keyboard stickers (AKA overlays or keytop labels), purchasing English/ Arabic keyboards, defining Arabic keyboards for Arabic language fonts and Arabic transliteration fonts, installing a free Arabic QWERTY/ phonetically defined keyboard, extending support of Arabic to all programs in Windows, typing non-Roman fonts, like Arabic, right-to-left in most versions of Microsoft Word, detecting the Arabic language automatically in Microsoft Word, enabling the Arabic Proofing Tools,

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