Yamli, An Immensely Useful Tool
I am about to tell you about a website I found which I think is very useful.
As a blogger who constantly researches online for stuff about Lebanon, a lot of which can be in Arabic, I found myself often frustrated.
The problem is, I don’t have an Arabic keyboard, and many times, material can only be found in Arabic. For example, I once wanted to post a picture of Assafir’s Talal Salman, but I couldn’t find any, because he mostly appears in Arabic websites.
Gladly, I found Yamli, a search website with an amazing capability. In it, I use my Latin keyboard to type things like “mou2amara”, then the magic happens: It will be automatically converted, inside the search box, to “مؤامرة “ after which I can quickly search using google’s search engine.
Gone are the days when I had to find those annoying Javascript-based Arabic Keyboards to type using my mouse. This is instantaneous gratification, great stuff. The next logical step would be an online word processor that uses the same technology.
(This post is not a commercial advertisement. Any paid-for endorsements would clearly state so)
Related Beirut Spring Posts:
• Exactly a year ago, when I was still on blogspot, I profiled Ikbis, an Arabic Youtube copycat • On May 14, I reviewed Annahar’s new website and decided it was too gimmicky • On July 8, I was revolted by Syria’s internet ban and wrote a post that teaches Syrians how to get around it.
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13 comments for “Yamli, An Immensely Useful Tool”
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Hello, my name is Mustapha and I blog in The Beirut Spring about Lebanese society and politics. I started in February 2005 after the killing of P.M. Rafik Hariri.
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Did you ever use Google’s translation page. It’s still in beta but can translate English text to Arabic which you could then copy/paste to google’s search window.
Jay, this is not the same. Yamli is a transliteration tool, not a translation one.
got it… i stand corrected.
Mus - it does have an online editor (top left corner.)
A very good website, thanks for sharing it…
thanks for the tip!I used http://www.newsbee.org/akeyboard.html but now thats a whole new ball game! Down with copy/paste lol
Now all I would need is a site that translates Arab articles into English. I’ve heard of a paid-for service, but for free would be even better.
Bookmarked it! great site
http://www.yamli.com/editor/
We do a lot of work for China, and my Chinese co-workers use a similar thing to type in pinyin (latin letters) and then they get the Chinese characters.
We had to send out a project once to the arab world and everyone at the office turned to me, and much to my embarrassment I couldn’t type fast in arabic… I have to look for the letters…
but msn language, I can do no problem… this will prove very very helpful…
thank you mustapha.
مصطفى
You can also type Arabic using this website:
http://www.indiana.edu/~arabic/typing_arabic.htm
Thanks Mustapha for the great post !
You would be happy to know that we are now working on a very cool application that will be released soon.
By the way you mentioned in your post that you were once trying to find pictures for Talal Salman. Here is a tip that would allow you to max out your search results with Yamli.
In the search frame there is a button that says “Include non-Arabic results” . When you check it, we will provide you with results on both “Tala Salman” and “طلال سلمان”. I myself find this useful when searching for videos of Arabic Singers.
Hope this helps :)
Check the best way to check the Arabic web with only an English keyboard at search.eiktub.com
You can also download the best Arabic notepad to type Arabic using any keyboard here at http://www.eiktub.com
It is free!!