Towards a standardized technical Arabic: can arabterm rise to the challenges?

Abstract

The current situation of technical terminology in the Arab world leaves much to be desired. Miscommunication is common and the lack of adequate terminology creates problems of all sorts. What is available does not correspond to the needs of the region. This paper aims to shed some light on the problems of today and of the past as well as show how the ARABTERM technical dictionary project can contribute to solving these problems simply by setting and publishing Arabic terminology for technical fields. ARABTERM is considered to be a serious effort to reanimate the language of science in Arabic and close the growing gap in standard terminology for technical fields left by dependence on foreign languages and other factors.