📚 Translate Course Details to Arabic in the Courses section

[Iten-No-404]

Every course in the Courses & Past Material page should be translated to Arabic.

You are required to head to public/department/General/Courses_ar.yaml and translate the respective course details from public/department/General/Courses.yaml.

👨🏻‍💻 Programming Courses

• Programming Techniques¹
• Data Structures & Algorithms¹
• Design & Analysis of Algorithms²
• Advanced Programming Techniques²

👩🏻‍💻 Software Engineering Courses

• Databases²
• Operating Systems²
• Software Engineering³
• Computer Graphics³
• Advanced Databases⁴
• Compilers & Languages⁴

🧠 Artificial Intelligence

• Image Processing³
• Pattern Recognition³
• Theoretical Machine Learning⁴
• Machine Intelligence⁴
• Natural Language Processing⁴
• Satellite Imaging⁴
• Cognitive Robotics⁴
• Data Science⁴
• Big Data Analytics⁴

🤖 Embedded and Digital Courses (Hardware)

• Logic Design I¹
• Logic Design II¹
• Microprocessor I²
• Microprocessor II²
• Embedded Systems³
• Computer Architecture³
• Very Large Scale Integration³

🌐 Security & Networks

• Cryptography³
• Computer Networks⁴
• Wireless Networks⁴

🧮 Mathematics

• Algebra & Multivariable Calculus¹
• Numerical Analysis¹
• Probability & Stats²
• Discrete Math²
• Number Theory³

📡 Communication Engineering

• Electrical Circuits¹
• Electronic Circuits¹
• Electromagnetism & Modern Physics¹
• Electrodynamics¹
• Analog Electronics²
• Digital Electronics²
• Signals and Systems²
• Analog Communication³
• Digital Communication³
• Control Engineering³

🤷 Other Engineering

• Civil Engineering¹
• Mechanical Engineering¹
• Electrical Engineering²

💹 General Courses

• Presentation Skills¹
• Technical Writing¹
• Project Management²
• Economics²
• Marketing³
• Business & Strategic Management³
• Law and Consultation⁴

Waiting for volunteers to contribute with any set of courses from those above.

Side Note: This is not the highest priority right now, but created the issue so that we don't forget it.

[EssamWisam]

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

[EssamWisam]

Considering the substantial effort we had to put in the English version, I propose that we might consider bypassing this altogether (i.e., keep it English only for this specific page). The rationale is as follows:

• It is quite tricky to translate topic-specific terms to Arabic. LLMs or Google translate will likely fail really bad
• Thus, it will also take substantial effort to do it right
• Even when we do, it's not quite useful because the subjects are taught in English and people are familiar/will be familiar with the terms in English and not in Arabic
• Aside from topic-specific terms that they will/have encounter(ed) anyway, the English in the page is much more humble compared to other pages in the website (where translation could be really helpful for some)

What do you think about this?

[Iten-No-404]

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Sorry to shock you. I know it will be a nightmare to translate. 😂

• It is quite tricky to translate topic-specific terms to Arabic. LLMs or Google translate will likely fail really bad

That's why we are translating it manually.

• Thus, it will also take substantial effort to do it right

100% Correct.

• Even when we do, it's not quite useful because the subjects are taught in English and people are familiar/will be familiar with the terms in English and not in Arabic

While it's true that it might not be useful for students who are already enrolled in the department since they will be taking the subjects soon enough, it should be useful for high school students who want to enrol in computer engineering and took all their subjects in Arabic which is quite common. They could be comparing the syllabus of CUFE with other universities to decide which one is more suitable for them.

• Aside from topic-specific terms that they will/have encounter(ed) anyway, the English in the page is much more humble compared to other pages in the website (where translation could be really helpful for some)

That is valid, can't argue with it.

I propose that we might consider bypassing this altogether (i.e., keep it English only for this specific page). ... What do you think about this?

Given all of the above, I propose we give the translation in this page a very low priority for now, and schedule it a little ahead the next academic year 2024/2025. Instead, we should focus on adding content to the empty pages as the FAQ and the Self Learning Resources pages.

[EssamWisam]

Appreciate your analysis into the matter which goes towards the best decision to make.

it should be useful for high school students who want to enrol in computer engineering and took all their subjects in Arabic which is quite common. They could be comparing the syllabus of CUFE with other universities to decide which one is more suitable for them.

Think they should be quite advanced to to do this which makes it less likely. Either way, there are three cases for the comparison:

• Comparing Cairo University with other public universities if someone is eligible to join it: should be extremely rare, Aim Shams just one rank below CU in Egypt is 300+ ranks below it globally according to QS, let alone other universities).
• Comparing Cairo University with other private universities: odds that they have their syllabi in Arabic are too small.
• Comparing computer engineering with computer science in Cairo University: there is a page dedicated just for that.

Could this lead you to reconsider and have us skip doing this? If not, I am okay with giving it a low-priority badge and coming back in 2024/2025 to revisit this argument and possibly find that it's useful.

Instead, we should focus on adding content to the empty pages as the FAQ and the Self Learning Resources pages.

We may not worry about the FAQ since it's meant to be real novel questions asked from students in Github issues (the rest of the website should answer all known ones such as laptop, drive, other departments, fields, why join, etc.). In other words, it will the FAQ should be naturally filled after some time when students start asking actual questions.

For the self-learning resources, we can proceed as follows:

1. Enumerate all the fields in our discipline
2. Make an issue where we request people to simply comment their field (out of those in 1) and the learning resources they used to get into it along with what they think about each of them
3. Periodically update the learning resources page with such inputs (it will be divided into sections, one per field and in each there is a list of resources and comments about each of them).

By this, even self-learning resources becomes something that will grow with time. What do you think?

[Iten-No-404]

Think they should be quite advanced to do this which makes it less likely.

I didn't mean that they will perform a thorough comparison. For example, imagine a student who is in the last year of high school and wants to become a hardware computer engineer. Then he'd want to find out which university offers the widest range of hardware subjects. He won't necessarily read the whole page, just the hardware courses.

• Comparing Cairo University with other public universities if someone is eligible to join it: should be extremely rare, Aim Shams just one rank below CU in Egypt is 300+ ranks below it globally according to QS, let alone other universities).

I'd think most people don't choose their university solely on global rank. People choose their university based on one or more of the following factors: rank, quality of education, availability of certain courses, programs, or specializations, tuition fees, closeness to their home, and others (ex: emotional reasons for example, one of their parents went to it). All that is assuming that they qualify grades wise.

Another point I'd like to add is that CUFE often gets students from other Arab countries who probably also took all their subjects in Arabic and would prefer to read more about the courses in CUFE in Arabic.

The idea of the website being bi-lingual should be a matter of taking people's reading-language preferences into account. Even if they can read English incredibly well, it shouldn't stop them from reading whatever they want it in Arabic.

Could this lead you to reconsider and have us skip doing this? If not, I am okay with giving it a low-priority badge and coming back in 2024/2025 to revisit this argument and possibly find that it's useful.

Unfortunately not. However, since I have no intention of working on this anytime soon, I agree with giving it the low-priority badge. I also see no need to revisit this discussion, I can solely work on it when the time comes, and you can simply give it a quick review afterwards. That being said I agree with you that compared to some other pages, this page might not be read in Arabic as much.

We may not worry about the FAQ since it's meant to be real novel questions asked from students in GitHub issues (the rest of the website should answer all known ones such as laptop, drive, other departments, fields, why join, etc.). In other words, it will the FAQ should be naturally filled after some time when students start asking actual questions.

Alright.

For the self-learning resources, we can proceed as follows:

1. Enumerate all the fields in our discipline
2. Make an issue where we request people to simply comment their field (out of those in 1) and the learning resources they used to get into it along with what they think about each of them
3. Periodically update the learning resources page with such inputs (it will be divided into sections, one per field and in each there is a list of resources and comments about each of them).

By this, even self-learning resources becomes something that will grow with time. What do you think?

I think it would be a long time before it has any content this way but it is probably the least effort & time consuming method.

What should we focus on now then?🤔

[EssamWisam]

I didn't mean that they will perform a thorough comparison.

Okay. I can see this could be possible.

I'd think most people don't choose their university solely on global rank. People choose their university based on one or more of the following factors: rank, quality of education, availability of certain courses, programs, or specializations, tuition fees, closeness to their home, and others (ex: emotional reasons for example, one of their parents went to it).

When I said it would "extremely rare", my impression was that if we were able to find statistics, we would find that most people at least choose it based on local/global rank. I didn't imply that other factors don't exist, just that, perhaps, they rarely make a difference leading someone to choose another public university over CU. The last two are the most plausible factors after rank but again, not a common case. Likewise, if someone is comparing this to another public university then it only makes sense that the program/specialization (computer engineering/science) is already there in both. Things like tuition fees and to some degree quality of education should be consistent across public universities, or at least I would surprised to hear someone say that CU is much worse than another public university in that aspect. Availability of courses could make sense, but it falls back to the previous point (where I mentioned that it could be possible).

Regardless, because I can't make a point that stats support this view for a lack thereof, and that I didn't exhausitvely think for all the possibilities while constructing the argument above, I will put this point aside.

Another point I'd like to add is that CUFE often gets students from other Arab countries who probably also took all their subjects in Arabic and would prefer to read more about the courses in CUFE in Arabic.

Since other points like this one anyway further add reasons to work on this aside from the fact that it makes the whole website "more consistent" because translations are taken care of in mostly all other pages.

I also see no need to revisit this discussion

Yes, when I asked about this, I thought that we would pause. I will be happy to help so long as time doesn't diverge while doing so (e.g., it taking 20 minutes to find translations for terms like principal component analysis and LR(K) parsing). My point from the beginning has been that the final usecases may not commensurate well with the effort that will be needed to work on it. That is, I have a tendency to avoid dedicating extensive time to something only to discover that it doesn't prove to be sufficiently useful. However, we at least agree that it is, therby, of much lower priority.

Thank you for this nice discussion. It sheds much more light on reasons I was not aware of for why this could be useful to someone.

I think it would be a long time before it has any content this way but it is probably the least effort & time consuming method....What should we focus on now then?🤔

I see two pathways:

• Make the issue I talked about, even before it gains significant traction, we could potentially respond with adequate resources for machine learning and frontend development.
• Laptop page translation would come in handy. Not sure if @KnockerPulsar has plans for it but I doubt it. I know that he has reached "positive results" regarding the LinkedIn data extraction issue.

[Iten-No-404]

When I said it would "extremely rare", my impression was that if we were able to find statistics, we would find that ... falls back to the previous point (where I mentioned that it could be possible).

That's true.

My point from the beginning has been that the final use cases may not commensurate well with the effort that will be needed to work on it.

A solid principle, I may add.

Thank you for this nice discussion. It sheds much more light on reasons I was not aware of for why this could be useful to someone.

Thank you for your thoughtful insights. It was a refreshing conversation.

• Make the issue I talked about, even before it gains significant traction, we could potentially respond with adequate resources for machine learning and frontend development.

Okay, sounds simple enough.

• Laptop page translation would come in handy. Not sure if @KnockerPulsar has plans for it but I doubt it. I know that he has reached "positive results" regarding the LinkedIn data extraction issue.

Fantastic.