Basis Technology has announced the release of its Arabic Desktop Suite, a trio of productivity applications for Microsoft Windows. This suite enables translators, report writers, and intelligence analysts to rapidly and accurately translate foreign names from Arabic and Persian into the Latin alphabet, in conformance with mandated government standards. It also includes applications for locating Middle Eastern place names against maps, and for typing Arabic with an ordinary English keyboard.

Basis includes a Microsoft Office plug-in, which standardizes names of people, places, and organizations from Arabic or Persian into any of several official transliteration standards. Consistent spellings are essential to correlating data across multiple sources. Yet translators struggle daily to determine the correct spelling of foreign names for inclusion into finished reports. This difficult task is greatly simplified through use of this application. Transliteration Assistant (XA) may also be used to automate the translation of large lists or directories of names, as might appear in phone books, catalogs, or databases.

The GeoScop Map Viewer is an interactive, map-viewing application employs sophisticated fuzzy search technology to locate geographic features on high-resolution maps. Users can enter queries in Arabic, Persian, or "approximate English" to obtain a list of candidate locations.

Basis' Arabic Editor application enables Arabic speakers at all levels of ability to compose, edit, and analyze Arabic documents from an ordinary English keyboard. The user types in Arabic using English letters representing Arabic sounds. Within an hour, a new user can be competently typing Arabic using this application, a quicker study than learning the conventional Arabic keyboard layout.

The Arabic Desktop Suite is available immediately. System requirements: Microsoft Windows XP and Microsoft Office XP or 2003.

(www.basistech.com)