# Hebrew/Arabic searching doesn't work



## JLanguage

No matter what Arabic or Hebrew word you search for, you get between 115 and 130 results every single time. This is when limiting your search to either the Hebrew forum or the Arabic forum as appropriate, if you search all the forums you'll get between 150 and 170 threads. Since most of the results don't have the word you searched for, I'm thinking that maybe this is an issue with forum software.

Thanks for your help,
-Jonathan.


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## Jana337

Hi Jonathan,

Thanks for pointing it out. Mike will hopefully provide a more complete answer. Let me outline briefly what I think is the cause of the problem: The software converts non-Latin scripts in an incomprehensible cluster of symbols. For instance the Arabic word for book, kitaab, looks like this in the vBspeak: %26%231603%3B%26%231578%3B%26%231575%3B%26%231576%3B

Still, this gibberish should be unique for every word. But the system apparently cannot go back from it to the original Arabic/Hebrew word.

I hope it can be fixed easily.

Jana


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## Whodunit

Jana, you're right about the vBencoding. The Arabic word "مُسْتَوًى" (which must be in our forum only one time!) seems to be written as "1394063" in Internet Explorer script, since it becomes a part of the web address in the "search window", or as %26%231605%3B%26%231615%3B%26%231587%3B%26%231618%3B%26%231578%3B%26%231614%3B%26%231608%3B%26%231611%3B%26%231609%3B (which I can see in the "thread in highlighted version) Here's my try to explain it: When I search for مُسْتَوًى, vBulletin converts it into numbers and symbols. The "%26...%3B" _word_ is exactly the same as for other Arabic words. So the words can't be highlighted, because every Arabic word gets this encoded _word_.

Hope Mike has a better idea.


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## el alabamiano

JLanguage said:
			
		

> No matter what Arabic or Hebrew word you search for, you get between 115 and 130 results every single time. This is when limiting your search to either the Hebrew forum or the Arabic forum as appropriate, if you search all the forums you'll get between 150 and 170 threads. Since most of the results don't have the word you searched for, *I'm thinking that maybe this is an issue with forum software.*
> 
> Thanks for your help,
> -Jonathan.


You're right, though I have no clue.  The easiest way around it is to *not *use the Google search box at the bottom of WordRef's Advanced Search, but to go directly to google.com and do a search, such as:

wordreference مُسْتَوًى

Here are the results:

 مُسْتَوًى - *WordReference* Forums - [ Traduzca esta página ]
*مُسْتَوًى* Arabic. *...* *WordReference*.com Language Forums. Dictionary Look
up:. English-Spanish, Spanish-English, English-Italian, Italian-English *...*
forum.*wordreference*.com/showthread.php?t=79601 - 64k -  En caché - Páginas similaresHebrew/Arabic searching doesn't work - *WordReference* Forums - [ Traduzca esta página ]
*WordReference*.com Language Forums. Dictionary Look up: *...* The Arabic
word "*مُسْتَوًى*" (which must be in our forum only one time! *...*
forum.*wordreference*.com/showthread.php?t=80544 - 38k -  En caché - Páginas similares
[ Más resultados de forum.wordreference.com ] ​_Para mostrarle los resultados más pertinentes, omitimos ciertas entradas muy similares a los 2 que ya hemos mostrado.
Si lo prefiere, puede  repetir la búsqueda e incluir los resultados omitidos._


(My language default for Google is Spanish).


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## mkellogg

Hmm.  Let me investigate this.  I can tell you that the root of the problem lies in the fact that the forum software uses "Western European" encoding and Arabic characters are outside the normal range and so the characters will be expressed by character code numbers to represent the Unicode value.

I think the best bet for now is to use Google or Yahoo or other major search engine.

Mike


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## mkellogg

vBulletin has confirmed that this is a bug with the software.  Hopefully they fix this.  They did offer a work-around.

You need to:
1. Go to Advanced Search
2. Put quotes around your word or phrase: "مُسْتَوًى"
3. Choose Boolean Search

I'm worried that this might cause problems for the server.  If you do this search and the forums server stops responding for a while, please let me know!

Mike


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## Jana337

ُExcellent, Mike!

My searches were instantanous. 

ينا


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## cherine

Yep, it works !
Thank you so much Mike


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