Software Internationalization Guide

Software Characteristics That Vary by Locale

Software Internationalization Guide—526225-002

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Arabic

Arabic is written from right to left, using a cursive writing style in which characters often

attach to characters that precede and follow them. In Arabic, characters can have

different forms at different locations within a word. For example, a character at the

beginning of a word has one form, but uses a different form when embedded in the

center of the word and still another form when it appears at the end of a word.

Because characters can have different forms at different positions in a word, Arabic is

called a context-dependent language. Languages such as Farsi (Persian), Urdu,

Pashto, Sindhi, and Kurdish use the Arabic alphabet as a base.

Figure 2-2 shows an example of cursive writing.

East Asian

East Asian languages typically depict a word or an idea with symbols called

ideographs. An ideograph usually represents an idea, rather than a sound. Most

ideographs are derived from the Chinese language. An estimated 100,000 ideographs

exist, although only a subset is used frequently.

Figure 2-3

is an example of an ideograph.

Figure 2-2. Cursive Writing