HAMBURG, Germany: The interactive language portal bab.la launched its Arabic version June 14. With the Arabic launch, bab.la includes Arabic-English as its 28th dictionary. “We are very excited to offer our language portal to an entirely new audience. Arabic was always on our wish list as it is the language of one of the strongest growing Internet and economic regions” says Andreas Schroeter, co-founder of bab.la. Bab.la's dictionaries are now available in Arabic on many communications channels. Besides using the website users can look up translations via mobile phone at http://babla.mobi/ as well. Twitter users can send words to @babladict and get the corresponding translation right back. “This is just the beginning as our portal is wiki-based. Users can suggest their own translations or complete existing translations” explains Susan Karmal, project manager of the Arabic version. She adds that “languages change all the time – and who can better keep track of all these changes than millions of users?” The Arabic version of the bab.la language portal can be found at: http://ar.bab.la/bab.la (http://bab.la/) is an interactive language portal offering bilingual dictionaries, vocabulary lessons, language quizzes, and language games all for free. Currently available in 17 different languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, Esperanto, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish & Turkish), the site operates on a wiki-style model, allowing users to contribute content and feedback. bab.la was founded in 2007 by Dr. Andreas Schroeter, Dr. Thomas Schroeter and Patrick Uecker. BM
