Adel Bechara

PART 4: Googla Fos7a Web/ App

LOCALIZING BRANDS (PART 4) I wanted to find a way to insert the Lebanese culture in the Google brand. Google usually provides services that are helpful on many levels. So, I came up with this new service that could be helpful in Lebanon. There are two forms of Arabic: the MSA (Modern Standard Arabic) or Fos7a; and the Spoken Arabic or Derij, that are different in pronunciation, words used, sentence format and letters.The MSA is common for all Arab countries but we only use it here for writing and reading so we’re not really comfortable with it in Lebanon. We only use it in formal settings and write it using Arabic letters.The Spoken Arabic is the one we’re used to because we grow up hearing and speaking it. Nowadays, we got used to writing it using Latin characters and numbers to replace Arabic letters based on phonetic pronunciation.This creates two mains issues. The first one is that MSA is used in formal settings but we’re not really comfortable with it, which makes it hard for us to find the right words. And the second issue is that typing Arabic letters digitally is not as easy for us because we’re used to the Latin characters keyboard. So, Google Fos7a is a service that translates the Spoken Arabic to MSA while making sure that nothing is lost in translation (unlike when translating between two different languages). I made a webpage for the service provided in the two foroms of Arabic as well as a mobile app to have more control over the design. It has two special features: the Mic and the Handwritten option. (THIS IS ONE OF THE OUTPUTS OF A YEAR-LONG THESIS, TO FIND MORE PRESS THE WEB ICON BELOW)