StartUpArabia

Mohamed Marwen Meddah | April 4, 2009 | View Comments

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Meedan has officially launched its online service into open beta. Meedan is a non-profit social technology company which aims to increase cross-language interaction on the web, with particular emphasis on translation and aggregation services in Arabic and English.

Through its use of Machine Translation (MT), Machine Augmented Translation (MAT), and distributed human translation, Meedan’s goal is to increase dialogue and exchange between Arabic and English speakers primarily by launching a cross-language forum for conversation and media sharing, in an attempt to foster understanding and tolerance between the Arab and Western worlds.

Meedan means ‘gathering place’ or ‘town square’ in Arabic, and it reflects the service that was designed to stand as a digital town square for a linguistically, culturally, and geographically diverse community of Arabic and English speaking Internet users, coming together online to discuss current events taking place all over the world.

Everything that appears on meedan.net is mirrored in Arabic and English; whether it’s the published headlines, the posted comments, or shared articles; so as to ensure an open two-way conversation.

Meedan was founded by Ed Bice in 2005 and incorporated as a nonprofit charitable organization in 2006.

For more information about the service and to try it out, go to: Meedan.net