Taghreedat () is the largest Arabic crowdsourcing initiative in the MENA region. With a community of over 9,000 Arab translators, editors and writers residing in 35 countries around the world, of which are 20 Arab countries,Taghreedat website Taghreedat aims to build an active Arabic digital content creation community that contributes directly and significantly to increasing the quality and quantity of Arabic content on the web, through crowdsourcing to increase Arab users' contribution to enriching Arabic content on the web through original content projects, and projects geared towards localization and Arabization.
Starting on May 31, 2011, on Twitter, as a call to action to increase the quality and quantity of Arabic digital content on Twitter via the hashtag #letstweetinarabic, Taghreedat has created a community of Arabic digital content enthusiasts from all parts of the Arab world, through its verified account on Twitter: @Taghreedat, which has over 142,000 followers.Taghreedat on Twitter
Taghreedat has collaborated with a number of international and regional stakeholders, among which are San Francisco-based organizations and companies including: Twitter, the Wikimedia Foundation, Storify, Easy Chirp, Meedan, Khan Academy, Google, WhatsApp, Coursera and Amara in addition to New York-based TED, Smartling and Foursquare in addition to Europe-based GameLoft and Abu Dhabi based twofour54 – the supporting organization which currently funds this initiative.
Recognition and impact On October 4, 2012, The Dubai School of Government released its latest report, including a case study on Taghreedat as a model for social entrepreneurship in the Arab region, citing Taghreedat's impact on applying crowdsourcing to increase the quality and quantity of Arabic digital content. The report was released by The Governance and Innovation Program (GIP) at the Dubai School of Government, in partnership with SAP MENA, and included a regional eight country survey to measure perceptions on the impact of social media usage on economic empowerment, employment and entrepreneurship in Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. On August 29, 2012, Taghreedat was selected as one of the Middle East's Top 25 Tech Initiatives leading the technology innovation scene in the Middle East region, in a list that has been created by The Wall Street Journals Neil Parmar and published in Washington, D.C.-based Al Monitor. Taghreedat was ranked 12th in the list, making it the only nonprofit initiative to have been included in the list, which also highlighted included various startups as part of its rankings.Top 25 Tech Stars in the Middle East Region - Al Monitor Original, By Neil Parmar Previously, on March 9, 2012, during the Presidential Official Statements at the ITU's Connect Arab States Summit held in Doha, Qatar, the Egyptian Presidential Statement, delivered by Egypt's Minister of Telecommunications singled out Taghreedat has one of the region's strongest efforts to enrich Arabic digital content. In a recent Klout study, dated April 2012, Taghreedat's Twitter account rounded in the top 5 most influential non-personal Arab Twitter accounts, in terms of reach, volume of interactions, retweets, mentions and overall user network. Taghreedat's projects have been covered in a number of international and regional media outlets, including: CNN, The Next Web, The Wall Street Journal, BBC World, France 24, CNBC ArabiYa, Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, Sky News Arabia, Chicago Tribune, Khaleej Times, Screen Daily, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Arabian Business, The National, Al Youm Al Sabe' and others. Taghreedat has also participated in a number of international and regional events to showcase its community-driven projects including Wikimania 2012 in Washington, D.C.,Al Arabiya News: Taghreedat To Offer Arab Tweeps Their Own Search Engine and TEDGlobal in Idinbrugh, United Kingdom. The initiative also participated in the Abu Dhabi Media Summit, where it held and spoke at a panel discussion on crowdsourcing with three of its key international stakeholders: Twitter, Storify and Meedan. Taghreedat also participated at the ITU Telecom World 2012, which was held in Dubai, UAE. The initiative spoke at a panel discussion on Big Data and how crowdsourcing fits into the ever-increasing debate on data ownership.
Partnerships and collaborations Taghreedat has collaborated with the following international digital content companies and organizations: Google, globally Twitter, Inc. in San Francisco, California TED in New York City Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco Storify in San Francisco Meedan in San Francisco Khan Academy in California WhatsApp in California GameLoft in Europe Easy Chirp in California Coursera in California Smartling in New York Amara in New York Foursquare in New York
Taghreedat's projects
Twitter Arabization Project The first of Taghreedat's projects which commenced on October 22, 2011, Taghreedat gathered a group of volunteers to Arabize over 190 Twitter glossary terms from English to Arabic to be then applied on Twitter's Arabic interface. Taghreedat collaborated with Twitter to develop such glossary, through a campaign that the initiative launched under the hashtag #letstweetinarabic to create momentum and awareness and was considered by Twitter as a grassroots step in the eventual launch of Twitter's Arabic interface, which Taghreedat and thousands of Arab volunteers at Twitter's Translation Center have contributed to make it a reality.
Arabic Wikipedia Editors Program In cooperation of the Wikimedia Foundation, Taghreedat has launched the Arabic Wikipedia Editors Program – a regional program which targets regular Internet users to train them (both online & offline) become Arabic Wikipedia editors. The program is composed of two main components: online training as well as offline workshops (training component) in addition to a reward component in the form of official certificates that the volunteer participants will be receiving. The project was launched in mid June 2012 and continues to attract new Arabic Wikipedia editors.Video from the Wikimedia Foundation on the Taghreedat/Wikipedia Partnership
Storify Arabization Project In mid May 2012, Taghreedat announced that it has started working with San Francisco-based Storify, the online curation social platform, to Arabize its website interface. Crowd-sourced community work on the project continued for 3 weeks until June 7, 2012. Starting July, Taghreedat has started working with Storify on the back-end to ensure the Arabic Storify interface is implemented while taking Arabic text placement in consideration. When launched, Arabic will become among the first 3 languages to be applied to the online curation website interface.The Next Web – Storify Working with Middle Eastern Initiative Taghreedat To Translate Storify Into Arabic
First Arabic Tech/Web 2.0 Dictionary Taghreedat is developing the first crowd-sourced Arabic technology dictionary for technology and social media terms, translated from English to Arabic. The dictionary comprises over 6,500 technology terms in various fields, including: cyber safety, cyber security, graphic design, PC terminology and more. Started in mid June 2012, work is currently ongoing to gather the Taghreedat community votes on all 6500 terms. The dictionary, expected to be launched later this year, has attracted the attention of a number of US and UK media outlets, tipping it as the first crowd-sourced collection of Arabic technology terms in the MENA region.
TED Website Localization Project On September 4, 2012, Taghreedat announced that it has begun working with the TED headquarters in New York to localize its official website into Arabic for the first time. The project will be carried out by Taghreedat's volunteer base, applying the same crowdsourcing model that Taghreedat has applied in its previous localization projects with Twitter and Storify.
Memorandum of Understanding with Meedan At its panel discussion session with a number of its international stakeholders including Twitter, Storify and Meedan, Taghreedat announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Meedan, the California based social translation and software NGO. This collaboration focuses on translating Open Education Resources (OER), and hence increasing the availability of educational resources in Arabic language for users worldwide, particularly students. The partnership will promote Taghreedat and Meedan's common goal of providing access to high quality Arabic digital educational content, Open Educational Resources, through online social translation software in the Middle East. This new agreement will allow Meedan, which has been working on building an online translation community since 2008, to focus its resources on program and software design and delivery. Taghreedat will work towards translating all online educational content and dialogue initiatives into Arabic through its active social media community of over 2500 volunteers.
Khan Academy Video Subtitling Project On November 6, 2012, Khan Academy launched an effort with Taghreedat to localize its educational video library into Arabic, offering an opportunity for all Arabic speaking learners worldwide to access a vast amount of quality open educational resources in their native language for free. The project came as the first tangible outcome of Taghreedat's MoU with California-based Meedan, which was signed in October at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit. The partnership directly falls into Arabizing Open Educational Resources and marks the beginning of a larger call to action to channel Arab users' enthusiasm to enrich Arabic content online into more areas than interface localization.
Arabic Web Days Program On November 23, 2012, Google announced the launch of "Arabic Web Days" to enrich digital Arabic content, through a series of activities and initiatives to be implemented by a group of prominent international bodies and regional shows in Middle East and North Africa over a month.
Google has partnered with Vinelab, Taghreedat and Wamda to shape the program, which also saw involvement of Twitter, WikiPedia, TED, SoundCloud and YouTube. The program was supported by local expertise from the Media Zone Authority in Abu Dhabi, twofour54 and Qatar Research Institute for Computing (QCRI).
Tajseed: the MENA Region's First Infographics Competition As part of Arabic web days, Taghreedat has announced on November 26, 2012, that it has partnered with Tajseed, the MENA region's first Arabic infographics competition, to launch the competition in its second round with the goal of amplifying the competition's goal and discovering Arab talent in the infographics field. Tajseed's first round had attracted over 40,000 visits to the website: tajseed.net and over 10,000 views to the competition video when it was first launched. By the end of the first round, over 300 Arabic infographics submissions were received and the winners were all announced in May 2012.
WikiQuote Project In cooperation with the Wikimedia Foundation, Taghreedat is contributing to Wikimedia's WikiQuote project, a Wikipedia sister project that collects various popular quotes and cultural sayings from around the world. Taghreedat will be contributing with around 2,000 Arabic quotes – originating from the Arab world or translated into Arabic to enrich the Repository. The project started in May 2012 and will continue throughout the year.
WhatsApp Localization Project