Arabic Localization of Open Source Software-A Case of Open Journal System

摘要

Open source software systems gained popularity by many organizations in recent years. Open sourcesystems vary from document management systems, content management systems to e-Learning systems. Thelow cost and ease of installation, use and customization of the systems has made it the right choice for manyinformation systems departments as a reliable and low cost viable solution. In the research and the academicfields there are many open source software applications available on the World Wide Web for free downloadand use. The open journal system is one of the best and widely used systems developed by the publicknowledge project. Functioning as a journal management and publishing system the system is developed asa nonprofit project and is an initiative of several universities working together for the development of free opensource software and conducting research to improve the quality and reach of scholarly publishingCODATA. The open journal system support the use of several languages, however it does not have a readytranslation file for Arabic language nor does it support the right to left text and document flow. Working oncustomizing the system into an Arabic version requires additional expertise in terms of customizing thecascading style sheets files and knowledge of the PHP programing language. The aim of this study is to providea road map for developers to localize the open journal system to Arabic language using two main techniques.The localization effort has been centered on translating the local files. The customization of the cascading stylesheet files and the layout templates shall be visited in another study due to the complexity of the process. Thestudys is intended to be a reference for all parties interested in the localization of the open journal system tobe used by journals published in Arabic language.