Revisit an old topic: Firefox as a brand in Arabic

[Peiying Mo]

Hello All,

I hope this message finds you well. I am writing to revisit an old topic, which some of you had shared your views several years ago.

We are now looking into this again. I have several questions:

- Even though our policy is to keep Firefox in English in our products and web based products and projects, what's happening in reality? How do people refer to Firefox, in Arabic, in English?

• If in Firefox, is it phonetic spelling that sounds similar to Firefox in Arabic?
• Are there different spelling of Firefox (our brand) in Arabic?
• If the Arabic names are not phonetic, what are their meanings? List them all.
• Where do the non-English names appear? Social media, technical journals, forums, support site, media coverage?
• Do people know what Firefox is in English? Do they know what it is in Arabic?
• How are other big tech companies are referred to in Arabic speaking world, namely Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Twitter?
  
• Note some of these names are made up and some have real meanings. If in Arabic, are they phonetic spelling or are they translated?
• For Google and Apple (we checked these two companies), their trademark in local language is limited. If not on their website or products, where do you see the Arabic references used?
• Do you think it is important to have a localized (phonetic transcreation or translation) brand name in order to raise Firefox brand awareness thus increase user base?
• VERY IMPORTANT: Is there an organization, like the EU, in the Middle East, if a trademark is applied and registered, the registration applies to the countries that joined the organization. Usually trademarks only are applied at country level. In the case of EU, once it is registered in one EU country, it applies to all the countries that join the EU. We are looking for organization like this.
  

Thank you for your time and sharing your thoughts. If you have additional comments to add, please do.

Note, I may not be on the mailing list. Make sure to include me in your reply.

Thank you very much!

Peiying

[Khaled Hosny]

Hello Peiying,

On Tue, Jul 31, 2018 at 03:46:29PM -0700, Peiying Mo wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> I hope this message finds you well. I am writing to revisit an old topic,
> which some of you had shared your views several years ago.
>
> We are now looking into this again. I have several questions:
> - Even though our policy is to keep Firefox in English in our products and
> web based products and projects, what's happening in reality? How do people
> refer to Firefox, in Arabic, in English?
>

In Arabic content, people almost always refer to Firefox using Arabic
script.

> - If in Firefox, is it phonetic spelling that sounds similar to Firefox
> in Arabic?

A phonetic spelling, though sometimes people translate it into “the fire
fox”, but it is mostly (I think) people trying to give a poetic or a
similar effect. The first google result for الثعلب الناري is
https://www.mozilla.org/ar/firefox/new/, thugh the words are nowhere to
be seen in that page.

> - Are there different spelling of Firefox (our brand) in Arabic?

Yes. One, فاسرفوكس, where the short vowel are represented by the letters for
long vowels and is the older spelling and a bit more common, and another
with the short vowels omitted and optionally represented by vowel
marks, فيرفكس or فَيَرفُكس, and this is the one the Arabic localization
team uses as it follows the Arabic orthographic rule for representing
short vowels and foreign names.

> - If the Arabic names are not phonetic, what are their meanings? List
> them all.
> - Where do the non-English names appear? Social media, technical

> journals, forums, support site, media coverage?

Almost everywhere. A quick google search for “متصفح firefox” (that is Firefox
browser, intentionally keeping Firefox in Latin script), the first
instance of Firefox being written only in Latin script in the middle of
Arabic text shows in the third page of results.

> - Do people know what Firefox is in English? Do they know what it is
> in Arabic?

I’m not sure I understand this question.

> - How are other big tech companies are referred to in Arabic speaking

> world, namely Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Twitter?

The same as Firefox, mostly using phonetic spelling written in Arabic
script.

> - Note some of these names are made up and some have real meanings. If

> in Arabic, are they phonetic spelling or are they translated?

> - For Google and Apple (we checked these two companies), their

> trademark in local language is limited. If not on their website or
> products, where do you see the Arabic references used?

On social media, news, and general any unofficial source.

> - Do you think it is important to have a localized (phonetic

> transcreation or translation) brand name in order to raise Firefox brand
> awareness thus increase user base?

I think we need a guideline that establishes the localized brand names
to be used in Mozilla localizations, instead of just outright banning
them. Not sure how much this would help raising the brand, since using
localized names is already the status quo.

> - VERY IMPORTANT: Is there an organization, like the EU, in the Middle

> East, if a trademark is applied and registered, the registration applies to
> the countries that joined the organization. Usually trademarks only are
> applied at country level. In the case of EU, once it is registered in one
> EU country, it applies to all the countries that join the EU. We are
> looking for organization like this.

I don’t know, but most likely no.

Regards,
Khaled

[pmo]

Thank you Khaled for your prompt answers to my questions. Regarding this one

      - Do people know what Firefox is in English? Do they know what it is
      in Arabic?

I’m not sure I understand this question.

What I meant is which version of (Mozilla) Firefox has better recognition or awareness in the Middle East, the name in English or in Arabic?

Yes, I totally agree with you on having a guidance. And this is why we are revisiting this. We are working on getting a survey created (by Mozilla, not L10n). And we will consider the information you provided when designing the survey. 

Does anyone else have anything to share?  

[Youghourta Benali]

Hello,

As far as I can tell, people recognize the “English” name but spelled in Arabic (phonetic spelling).

In other word فيرفكس (which is pronounced exactly like “firefox” is pronounced)

How are other big tech companies are referred to in Arabic speaking world, namely Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Twitter? 

For big companies, everyone (with maybe a few exceptions) use the phonetic spellings,

In the case of facebook and twitter (and even wikipedia) we have “official” translations (i.e used by these company themselves). These official translation are phonetic spellings as well.

There is one strange thing I noticed, some companies like google and apple do not provide any translations for their names they use “apple” and “google” inside arabic text 

As we can see here:

https://www.apple.com/ae-ar/

And here:

https://www.google.com/intl/ar/contact/

Even though people use usually  phonetic spellings that are pronounced slightly differently from the “original brands”

For instance google is usually translated either to جوجل (which could be pronounced as joujel) or قوقل (the ق sound doesn’t even exist in english)

When it comes to Apple, people are usually translating it to “آبل” which is pronounced (Aable)

Do you think it is important to have a localized (phonetic transcreation or translation) brand name in order to raise Firefox brand awareness thus increase user base?

Yes

BTW, we are already using فَيَرفُكس in mozilla website and everywhere else, 

So what we really need is to “officialize” the translation

VERY IMPORTANT: Is there an organization, like the EU, in the Middle East, if a trademark is applied and registered, the registration applies to the countries that joined the organization. Usually trademarks only are applied at country level. In the case of EU, once it is registered in one EU country, it applies to all the countries that join the EU. We are looking for organization like this. 

As far as I can tell, no

-- 
Youghourta Benali
@djug

Le mar. 31 juil. 2018 à 23:47, Peiying Mo <p...@mozilla.com> a écrit :

Hello All,

I hope this message finds you well. I am writing to revisit an old topic, which some of you had shared your views several years ago.

We are now looking into this again. I have several questions:

- Even though our policy is to keep Firefox in English in our products and web based products and projects, what's happening in reality? How do people refer to Firefox, in Arabic, in English?

• If in Firefox, is it phonetic spelling that sounds similar to Firefox in Arabic?

• Are there different spelling of Firefox (our brand) in Arabic?

• If the Arabic names are not phonetic, what are their meanings? List them all.

• Where do the non-English names appear? Social media, technical journals, forums, support site, media coverage?

• Do people know what Firefox is in English? Do they know what it is in Arabic?

• How are other big tech companies are referred to in Arabic speaking world, namely Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Twitter?
  

• Note some of these names are made up and some have real meanings. If in Arabic, are they phonetic spelling or are they translated?

• For Google and Apple (we checked these two companies), their trademark in local language is limited. If not on their website or products, where do you see the Arabic references used?

• Do you think it is important to have a localized (phonetic transcreation or translation) brand name in order to raise Firefox brand awareness thus increase user base?

• VERY IMPORTANT: Is there an organization, like the EU, in the Middle East, if a trademark is applied and registered, the registration applies to the countries that joined the organization. Usually trademarks only are applied at country level. In the case of EU, once it is registered in one EU country, it applies to all the countries that join the EU. We are looking for organization like this.
  

Thank you for your time and sharing your thoughts. If you have additional comments to add, please do.

Note, I may not be on the mailing list. Make sure to include me in your reply.

Thank you very much!

Peiying

_______________________________________________
dev-l10n-ar mailing list
dev-l...@lists.mozilla.org
https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-l10n-ar

[pmo]

Thank you Youghourta for sharing your thoughts on this topic.

Ideally, if we are following the current Mozilla branding guideline, only English should appear on Mozilla websites/products, but I can imagine the urge of translating (phonetically) into Arabic, for ease of readability.

I hope we have a survey to confirm what we already know so both creative (responsible for Mozilla brands) and legal teams have some data to go by with our decisions.

Thanks again!

Peiying

[Khaled Hosny]

On Wed, Aug 01, 2018 at 06:44:05PM +0100, Youghourta Benali wrote:
> Hello,

>
> Even though people use usually phonetic spellings that are pronounced
> slightly differently from the “original brands”
> For instance google is usually translated either to جوجل (which could be
> pronounced as joujel) or قوقل (the ق sound doesn’t even exist in english)

Note that the ق in many Khaliji dialects (where this spelling is used)
is pronounced /ɡ/, so it is a different spelling but the same sound, but
this is a bit off-topic here, since this is a peculiarity of the /ɡ/
sound in Arabic.

Regards,
Khaled

[Peiying Mo]

Hello again,

We are going to create a survey targeting Arabic internet users in the Middle East, not necessarily all Firefox users. As part of the design of the survey, we would like to get you to help us with the different versions of Firefox in Arabic. You have listed a few here. What I need is 5-10 (if you could find these many), based on the ranking of popularity if this is something you already have insight of. If you don't the popularity (or ranking), then just list them but indicate so. Also list the one that you recommend us to consider for future trademark filing. I know you have shared that with me, but let's keep everything in one place (one response in your email.

Also let me know if you prefer to translate the survey questionnaires or not. If not, I would arrange the translation but you will get to review it before it is pushed to production.

Please discuss among yourselves and reply with a final answer. You can discuss through email thread but let me know what you can all agree on, whatever you prefer. Do you think you can give me something by Monday California time?

Thank you so much!

Peiying

[Youghourta Benali]

Hi Peiying,

IMHO, this is not the right approach, for the following reasons:

• a survey like this one will send a signal that the translation we have been using all these years is not the right/official one, and will undermine all the efforts we did to share it and ask people to use it (as a reminder we've been using the same translation of firefox for many many years)
• a survey is a good tool to ask people about their preferences (which color you like, which logo you prefer) the question we are asking here is "what is the right/best translation" and we shouldn't let the crowd decide the right way of translating something. even if we create a survey about which solution prefer for 2+2, you'd be surprised how many would respond 5.
• the Arabic speaking internet user could not be trusted when it comes to questions related to Arabic. let me give you just one example. usually when I write something in French or in English, I google parts of my sentences to see if I'm formulating them correctly (or if I misspelled some words). and I can tell which sentence/word is right based on the number of results I get. when it comes to Arabic you can google the right and the wrong form of any given sentence/word and you'd get similar results for both (and sometimes you can even get more wrong sentences/words than the right ones)

for all these reasons, I highly recommend that we stick to the translation we have right now (we already have a good translation, why should we even consider changing it?)

Best, 

-- 
Youghourta Benali
@djug

[Peiying Mo]

Hello Youghourta,

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this topic. Please see my in-line comments.

On Wed, Aug 8, 2018 at 12:00 AM, Youghourta Benali <yough...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Peiying,

IMHO, this is not the right approach, for the following reasons:

• a survey like this one will send a signal that the translation we have been using all these years is not the right/official one, and will undermine all the efforts we did to share it and ask people to use it (as a reminder we've been using the same translation of firefox for many many years)

Actually part of the purpose of this survey is brand awareness, what people (users and non-users) know and recognize, less about which one they like. 

• a survey is a good tool to ask people about their preferences (which color you like, which logo you prefer) the question we are asking here is "what is the right/best translation" and we shouldn't let the crowd decide the right way of translating something. even if we create a survey about which solution prefer for 2+2, you'd be surprised how many would respond 5.

We will have a chance to review the survey before it is final. In fact, we will come to the community to have the survey translated. From the discussion we had this week, we will not ask what people like but what they have seen. But let's see what the questions are when they come out for review.

• the Arabic speaking internet user could not be trusted when it comes to questions related to Arabic. let me give you just one example. usually when I write something in French or in English, I google parts of my sentences to see if I'm formulating them correctly (or if I misspelled some words). and I can tell which sentence/word is right based on the number of results I get. when it comes to Arabic you can google the right and the wrong form of any given sentence/word and you'd get similar results for both (and sometimes you can even get more wrong sentences/words than the right ones)

for all these reasons, I highly recommend that we stick to the translation we have right now (we already have a good translation, why should we even consider changing it?)

 

We will rely on the recommendation by the community when we look for the official name for Firefox in Arabic. The survey will give us better idea what people know of Firefox, especially those who don't use Firefox. We will get back to you when we have the survey ready for review.

[Khaled Hosny]

Hi Peiying,

Wile I agree with points Youghourta raised, based in your clarifications
below I think it is a reasonable thing to do and I’m looking forward to
the survey and its results.

I think we definitely want the survey translated to Arabic.

Regards,
Khaled

On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 02:35:58AM -0700, Peiying Mo wrote:
> Hello Youghourta,
>
> Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this topic. Please see my in-line
> comments.
>
> On Wed, Aug 8, 2018 at 12:00 AM, Youghourta Benali <yough...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Hi Peiying,
> >
> > IMHO, this is not the right approach, for the following reasons:
> >

> > - a survey like this one will send a signal that the translation we

> > have been using all these years is not the right/official one, and will
> > undermine all the efforts we did to share it and ask people to use it (as a
> > reminder we've been using the same translation of firefox for many many
> > years)
> >
> > Actually part of the purpose of this survey is brand awareness, what
> people (users and non-users) know and recognize, less about which one they
> like.
>
> >

> > - a survey is a good tool to ask people about their preferences (which

> > color you like, which logo you prefer) the question we are asking here is

> > "what is the *right/best* translation" and we shouldn't let the crowd

> > decide the right way of translating something. even if we create a survey
> > about which solution prefer for 2+2, you'd be surprised how many would
> > respond 5.
> >
> > We will have a chance to review the survey before it is final. In fact, we
> will come to the community to have the survey translated. From the
> discussion we had this week, we will not ask what people like but what they
> have seen. But let's see what the questions are when they come out for
> review.
>
> >

> > - the Arabic speaking internet user could not be trusted when it comes

[Peiying Mo]

Hello Khaled and all

It's great that we have you onboard for this survey. We are counting on the community to translate the survey. I am waiting for the design of the survey to come out and will definitely share with you as well.

In the meantime, do provide a list of popular expressions you have heard and if you know the preferences of one over the other, list them in the most preferred on the top. Definitely include the proposed name as well. We want to get a feel how the markets respond and will share the result with you for sure. This is a new experience for me, so I am learning as we get to each of the process.

Thank you,

Peiying

[Peiying Mo]

Hello Everyone,

I hope you had a great workshop in Amman this past weekend.

This is a kind reminder I need a list of names that I need to submit to the survey team. We don't have to have 5-10 names in order to have the survey created. Whatever you can come up with that are frequently seen is good enough. Just make a bullet list so I can easily copy and paste or just forward them to the team. The survey should be ready soon for localization.

Thank you in advance,

Peiying

[Youghourta Benali]

I'd suggest the following :

• فَيَرفُكس
  
• فيرفكس
  
• فايرفوكس
• فايرفُكس
• الثعلب الناري

-- 
Youghourta Benali

@djug

[Peiying Mo]

Thank you Youghourta!