Hindu-Arabic vs. Western Arabic-Indic Numbers

Question

Hi, 
 We are working on translations for Saudi Arabia. Our client wants to use Western Arabic-Indic characters in the final output. Our translator has used the Hindi-Arabic numerals (as we are used to in the United States) for numeric values. He says the final output will make the change to Western Arabic-Indic. This may be true when using Word or InDesign, but our client uses a Content Management System (CMS) which does not appear to make the conversion. 
 We have experimented with making changes within the sdlxliff file with no success. Any suggestions?

Phil Elliott · Answer

Hi, 
 I&rsquo;ve just been reviewing the posting and I take it that, as is the common way in Saudi, you want the numbers displayed as Western Arabic-Indic as in the below chart and not as those is the Hindu-Arabic. (Chart from a Wiki entry). 
 
 I ask this as my understanding was that Hindi numerals were displayed like the Western Arabic-Indic above, and Arabic numerals like the Hindu-Arabic? (No local Arabic person has disagreed with this view, but seems to be a wrong understanding when looking at Wiki) This is even more confusing as in MS Word 1,2,3 is under the term Arabic and those shown as Western Arabic-Indic in the above chart are described as Hindi????? 
 Anyway, based on the fact that you wish to have Western Arabic-Indic numerals displayed using the terminology in the above image, then from the Editor view in SDL Trados Studio they will always be displayed as Hindu-Arabic (i.e. 1,2 3, etc). However, my understanding is that once you create the final target version then they will be displayed based on the settings of the application, as with MS Word where the options are Arabic, Hindi, Context, System (where Arabic = Hindu-Arabic and Hindi = Western Arabic-Indic) or where the application does not have its owns settings, then from the Windows settings in the Control Panel under Language &ndash; Change Date, time or number formats where the options are Context, Never, National . 
 I have checked this out and if you change the setting to National within the above Windows settings then in a Notepad document this will display the numbers in Western Arabic-Indic. However, I am not sure how this will react if it is a CMS file and stored on a system using an alternative operating system, although maybe its stored as an xml file and therefore has attributes determining which numeric format to be used by any rendering/formatting engine when published? 
 Hope this helps, but if you can let us know what the file format is that you are translating, that may help us to help you further. 
 All the best 
 Phil.

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Hindu-Arabic vs. Western Arabic-Indic Numbers