Why Doesn't Steam Support Arabic?

[Wenn Leuchtend]

I dont know why,there are many Arabian-Speaking countries in the world.

[Vanilla]

Valve does not have many translations to use for some languages.

[Wenn Leuchtend]

But Arabic is the common language of Arab nation and one of working language in the United Nations.

[Satoru]

Actually a lot of problems stem from the fact that a lot of APIs dont suport RTL (Right To Left) languages with regards to displaying them or support in general.

Its kinda similar to the problems CJK (Chinese Japanese Korean) languages had maybe a decade ago.

Its also due to the fact that many game development takes place in LTR countries.

However hopefully support of RTL will become more common in the future as many RTL countries now have vibrant indie scenes.

[Ogami]

Steam has also no chinese support and much more people speak chinese then arabic.
English is just the international standard.

[Satoru]

Rami Ismail of Vlambeer has done a lot of talks about supporting RTL and just how much English may be holding back really talented people.

This has even been brought up in the context of scientific discovery as well. Where English is the franca lingua of science but how that may be hindering publishing of papers where super smart scientists arent publishing simply because it has to be in english. A problem that wasn't evident even back in Einstein's day where they published in French/german/etc.

Its a pretty complicated problem.