Right to left languages such as Arabic

[QDATRAINING Admin]

We just got an enquiry on the ‘shoutbox’ which I thought was worth posting on the Forum. That is, does NVivo cope with right to left languages such as Arabic?

Here is my response:

There two things to consider here. The interface (what language the menus and toolbars are available in) and the data itself. In what languages can I import and code transcripts? The software interface (menus and toolbars) are available in English, French, German, Spanish, Japanese or Simplified Chinese. You can import transcripts in any language. However, right to left languages such as Arabic do not perform well in Nvivo. There are workarounds and I have personal experience of working with Arabic coders where we successfully completed projects but not without some technical difficulties. Hope this answers your question but if you want more information, contact us direct at  support@qdatraining.eu

[Anonymous]

Hi …

May I ask how do you manage arabic data successfully with little mistakes?

thanks a lot.

Mouna
UAE

[QDATRAINING Admin]

Hi Mouna,

I'm afraid, NVivo does not support left to right languages such as Arabic as of now and I'm not aware of any plans by the developers (www.qsrinternational.com) to rectify this situation. We get a lot of enquiries about this. As of now, if you import Arabic text into NVivo, it chops the end of the text on the right and although I've worked with researchers who have done their projects despite this problem, I personally could not live it. 

So I guess the whole Arab world will have to look elsewhere for a solution to their computer aided qualitative data analysis needs which is very unfortunate. I'm sorry I could not be of more help. However, the package Atlas.ti does support Arabic text. Have a look at this:

http://www.atlasti.com/productintro.html

Kind regards,

Ben

[Anonymous]

Thanks Ben for your reply. At least you provided an alternative which I absolutely will look for 🙂

Cheers,
Mouna

[Author]

Posts