"This is an example of innovation based on local culture, local understanding and local language. It's not a variation of western technologies," Haddad said. Still, he added, "you can have the smartest search engine in the world, but if you don't have content, it's useless."

The interesting thing about this market is that we have 400 million speakers and it's the fifth largest spoken language out there, so its a huge market -- all united by the Arab language," he said, contrasting it with the language and culture-divided European market.

It's a huge opportunity. I think we're at a tipping point, 60 million online users, 200 million mobile users -- the numbers are amazing.

Experts in Arabic Web content say that since its release a year ago, Yamli has helped increase Arabic content on the Internet just by its use. They say that bodes well for the Arabic Web and for communication between the Arab and Western worlds.

Yamli has opened the eyes of this section of the Arab world to a new-found ability to type in classical or local dialects of Arabic, which will catapult the amount of Arabic words and pages available on the internet.

Those challenges extend to the Web where the possibility of finding news and information in standard Arabic script is overwhelming and often incomplete. [...] Yamli offers a solution in that it allows users to spell the Arabic word the way they think it would be spelled in English. It automatically provides matches from that spelling and other relevant matches from alternate spellings.

هذه الصعوبات أصبحت تحديا كبيرا لكل من يحاول البحث عن معلومات أو أخبار باللغة العربية على شبكة الإنترنت. ... يؤكد حبيب أن ما يحاول هذا الموقع فعله هو حل المشكلات التي لم تتمكن شركات كبيرة كغوغل ومايكروسوفت من حلها.

Today, the Arabic language represents less than 0.5% of the content on the Internet! Our mission at Yamli is to empower the Arabic language on the web, and I assure you this: we are going to change that percentage to a much higher number, one that is well deserved by the Arabic language.

Yamli.com, a US-based start-up, has gone a step further, allowing users to search for Arabic content on the internet using the Roman alphabet, in a similar way that many Arabic speakers use Roman letters to transliterate Arabic script when sending text messages

Jureidini and Haddad’s success is an example of how, equipped with the right knowledge and a great skill set, young Arabs can prosper.

US-based internet start-up Language Analytics launched the beta version of Yamli.com, a web-based tool that is tipped to revolutionise the Arabic web.

في تنقلاتنا وسفراتنا أحياناً نحتاج للبحث عن موضوع معين بلغتنا الأم اللغة العربية ولكن تكون المشكلة الأولى والمهمة والتي نواجهها هي أننا لا نجد جهازاً يدعم الكتابة باللغة العربية، موقع Yamli.com والمدعوم من قوقل يقدم خدمة كتابة الكلمة العربية باللغة الإنجليزية

في لقاء مع "النهار" يشير حداد الى ان "مستخدمي الكومبيوتر والانترنت من العرب يعدون بعشرات الملايين، الا ان النسبة الكبرى منهم لا يتقنون الطباعة بالعربية بل يعمدون الى طباعة الكلمة العربية كما يلفظونها مستعينين بالاحرف اللاتينية، واحيانا يلجأون الى هذه الطريقة حتى بوجود لوحة مفاتيح تحمل احرفا عربية لأنهم اعتادوا الطباعة باللاتينية، وهذا الامر يصعّب عليهم مهمة القيام بالابحاث او كتابة النصوص بالعربية وحتى الدردشة Chatting من هنا اهمية برنامج "يملي" الذي ينفرد بتقديم سهولة الطباعة بالعربية الى مستخدميه، أكان في البحث او في البريد الالكتروني او المنتديات او خدمة الرسائل الخلوية... وهذا ما سيسهل التواصل بين العرب عبر الانترنت"

What YAMLI does is open the Arabic Internet for Arabic speakers who are accustomed to using English transliteration - phonetically typing out Arabic words into English.

والحل توّج بمشروع إلكتروني لإحياء اللغة العربية على شبكات الإنترنت. وهكذا، أبصر www.yamli.com - «أكتب عربي» النور، ليحل مشكلة كبيرة يعاني منها ملايين العرب في جميع أنحاء العالم: الطباعة باللغة العربية. «يُملي» كالأستاذ

Those challenges extend to the Web where the possibility of finding news and information in standard Arabic script is overwhelming and often incomplete. [...] Yamli offers a solution in that it allows users to spell the Arabic word the way they think it would be spelled in English. It automatically provides matches from that spelling and other relevant matches from alternate spellings.

هذه الصعوبات أصبحت تحديا كبيرا لكل من يحاول البحث عن معلومات أو أخبار باللغة العربية على شبكة الإنترنت. ... يؤكد حبيب أن ما يحاول هذا الموقع فعله هو حل المشكلات التي لم تتمكن شركات كبيرة كغوغل ومايكروسوفت من حلها.

Yamli [...] has launched a revamped version of its site that introduces a number of enhancements, including a way to automatically search for phonetically similar words that are spelled differently - a significant feature that could further bolster Yamli’s position in this still-fledgling space.

When it comes time to type in Arabic, many Internet users have adopted a phonetic web language that spells out Arabic words with these Latin letters. The result, Haddad says, is messy[...]. Yamli has built a system that solves this problem.

We aim to empower the Arabic web, tool by tool, innovation by innovation[...]. We are going to attempt to solve this problem by getting down and dirty, identifying every little annoying unsolved problem that affects a lot of users, and keep on banging our heads until we nail it down and solve it the right way.

It seems that although Arabic keyboards are available, most Arabic-speaking surfers use an English keyboard. They often resort to spelling Arabic words out phonetically using English characters. Yamli converts these transliterations into into Arabic words.

Many Arabic speakers do not have access to an Arabic keyboard. Those who do are often not proficient in using one. In fact, people often resort to transliteration. Yamli leverages this widespread technique to allow people to easily convert such text back to Arabic characters.

بدأت اللغة العربية في سحب البساط شيئاً فشيئاً من تحت أقدام اللغة الانجليزية لتكسر احتكار دام سنوات كثيرة على الإنترنت، فظهرت فى الآونة الأخيرة بعض الأمور التى رفعت من شأن العربية على شبكة الإنترنت لعل أبرزها هو الموافقة على استخدامها فى كتابة عناوين المواقع وآخرها ما تم الكشف عنه من أداة لمساعدة مستخدمي الإنترنت العرب على البحث عن المحتويات العربية على الويب ولكن باستخدام الأحرف الإنجليزية.

I always thought Google needed such a tool because:

1. For some, it is much more convenient to search using the latin characters. And sometimes one is even stuck with a keyboard with arabic characters.
2. A lot of webpages are _written_ in the transliterated form already, which is worth being indexed and found – perhaps through converting them.
3. It would be useful for an arabic query to be searched for using BOTH forms ...

Gladly, I found Yamli, a search website with an amazing capability. In it, I use my Latin keyboard to type things like “mou2amara”, then the magic happens: It will be automatically converted, inside the search box, to “مؤامرة ” after which I can quickly search using google’s search engine.
Gone are the days when I had to find those annoying Javascript-based Arabic Keyboards to type using my mouse. This is instantaneous gratification, great stuff.

Yamli Search is very intriguing new search engine that transliterates Arabic written in the Latin alphabet into Arabic proper, and then runs that query through Google. It’s really quite neat — for instance if you type “ikhwan al muslimeen” it will search for “اخوان المسلمين”. You have to try it out to see what I mean.

Yamli est en effet un moteur de recherche un peu particulier. Imaginons que vous vouliez chercher un terme arabe bien précis mais que vous ne savez pas comment cela s’écrit ou tout simplement que vous n’ayez pas envie de faire la manipulation pour entrer les caractères de la langue.

As an Arabic speaking person who struggles with written communication and web navigation in Arabic, this software is a Godsend! While I operate in a purely English environment using English tools, I often need to communicate with Arabic-speaking businesses or research certain aspects of the Middle East market. With Yamli, I can simply type in English the phonetic iteration of the Arabic word that I want to write and the software will convert it automatically to the correct Arabic text! Hatha barnamej 3ajeeb wallahi! (This is an incredible program!)

Yamli is like the awesomest, most useful thing EVER.

اوعوا تقولوا عليا مجنون ولا عندي حالة نفسية ولازم اروح العباسية ضروري ادخل على ياملي - Yamli وشوف العجب بنفسك

Yamli s’attaque ainsi à un problème qui a limité l’expansion du web arabophone. Car alors même qu’Internet est de plus en plus utilisé dans le monde arabe, l’accès et le développement du contenu en arabe sur le web ont été freinés entre autre par la difficulté d’écrire en arabe sur écran : il existe bien sûr des claviers arabes, mais peu sont disponibles en dehors du monde arabe. Les internautes arabophones vivant à l’étranger sont habitués à taper sur des claviers anglais (QWERTY), et à écrire les mots arabes en phonétique, en utilisant des caractères occidentaux (selon un procédé appelé « translittération »). Yamli permet à ces internautes de convertir ces caractères occidentaux en lettres arabes, et ainsi de recomposer les termes originaux.

... you need to write your folks a letter. Yes sure it sounds lovely to write in your email to your folks and freinds: “Happy weekend”, “I love you”, “Happy holiday”. But you know in your heart deep down that you need to write home in home language. And it lacks one thing: An arabic letters keyboard…
...
And here comes a revolution by Yamli.com who put this method in practical solution called Yamli.

I am so fascinated by the work of Yamli, the way they render the Arabic letters. The way they have came up with the idea to actually help people who struggle with the Arabic keyboard awkward layout.
...
The effort is FASCINATING to say the least, it's outstanding.