This Sunday, December 18th marks the 7th annual World Arabic Language Day! And what better way to celebrate this diverse language than to make access to the open Internet and digital security more accessible to the millions of Arabic speakers!

Some background...
43 years ago on the same day, the United Nations General Assembly approved Arabic as one of the six official languages of the UN (the other languages being Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish). UN Arabic Language Day was established in 2010 with the intention of celebrating multilingualism and cultural diversity and in recognition a language spoken by nearly half a billion people.

How to celebrate...
For many, open access to information online is not a given and communicating securely is not a preference, but a necessity. Thus, making Internet freedom tools and resources usable and accessible for everyone, including for the estimated 422 million Arabic speakers, is a difficult but important task.

Translate! There are currently 40+ projects in the Localization Lab Hub being translated into Arabic and many of them just need one last push to reach completion. Take a look at the full list of projects and progress in Arabic and take a moment over the weekend to contribute where you can!

Some projects in need of Arabic translations in the short term are:
Mailvelope "OpenPGP Encryption for Webmail"
Lantern "...a software application for desktop and mobile that gives access to blocked websites and apps."

Share! Let your fellow netizens know which Internet freedom and secure communication tools you use and love in Arabic and share which tools you would like to see translated into Arabic in the future. Share via Twitter (@l10nlab) or start a discussion in the Localization Lab Discussion Forum.

#اليوم_العالمى_للغة_العربية
#WorldArabicLanguageDay
#حرية_الإنترنت_باللغة_العربية
#InternetFreedomInArabic