October 18, 2001

1:42 PM

MSNBC launches Arabic version.This looks to be a partnership between MSNBC and GoodNews4me. I'm curious to see how different their version of the news is - can anyone with Arabic reading skills comment?
posted by kaefer (6 comments total)

Well a quick reading of the arabic and english versions of MSNBC.com shows that the arabic version is differnet from the US version. Almost all the news on the front page is about the middle east and the main emphasis is on the report about the young child that died after Israeli aggression.

The navigational menu on the left, is about the same. In the arabic version, the menu right under the MSNBC button is "News". This takes us to a drop down list where we can pick either "International News" or other content like letter to the editors, in depth analysis etc.

It would be safe to assume that the content is pro-US no doubt about it. This can paly a big part in the propoganda war between mr. bush and mr. bin laden.

Just want to add that Arabic is written left-to-right and my general idea is that the site is done very well.

Hope that helps.
posted by adnanbwp at 2:27 PM on October 18, 2001

Interesting. BTW, I checked out the Al-Jazeera (Arabia's CNN) website yesterday, assuming that there would be some English-language pages, but I couldn't find any.
posted by davidmsc at 2:42 PM on October 18, 2001

From a design perspective, there's an intriguing difference between the Arabic MSNBC and Al-Jazeera: the "native" Arabic site,as you might expect, flips the conventional left and right navbars; GN4MSNBC keeps the English-language templates, with navigation on the left, and search on the right.

adnanbwp: since you read both languages, which approach seems more logical with Arabic?
posted by holgate at 3:28 PM on October 18, 2001

I'm surprised more western designers aren't flipping the navbar, as its so easy to do... however it aligns everything RTL, not just the navbar so.... I think it only shows up in IE 5+ though I'm not positive.
posted by cell divide at 3:45 PM on October 18, 2001

er scrollbar I meant, not navbar
posted by cell divide at 3:45 PM on October 18, 2001

Just a correction. My husband grew up in Saudi Arabia and had several years of Arabic language in school. Arabic is written and read from right to left, but numbers are read from left to right.
posted by moosedogtoo at 5:02 PM on October 18, 2001