Sakhr Software Company (صخر) is an Arabic language technology company based in Kuwait

Kuwait

The State of Kuwait is a sovereign Arab state situated in the north-east of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the south at Khafji, and Iraq to the north at Basra. It lies on the north-western shore of the Persian Gulf. The name Kuwait is derived from the...

. It deals with products for the Middle East in e-governance, education, wireless, and security.

Sakhr was founded in 1982 by Mohammed AlSharekh

Mohammed AlSharekh

Mohammed Al-Sharekh is the Kuwaiti chairman of the SAKHR Software Company. With his company, he has introduced the Arabic language into computers and technology.- How it all started :In 1982, Al-Sharekh launched Sakhr Software Co...

 after branching out of his computer hardware company Alamiah Electronics by producing Arabic versions of the MSX computers. After nearly three decades in the industry and more than US $100 million investments, it now leads the field in Arabic language machine translation

Translation

Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...

, OCR, speech recognition

Speech recognition

Speech recognition converts spoken words to text. The term "voice recognition" is sometimes used to refer to recognition systems that must be trained to a particular speaker—as is the case for most desktop recognition software...

, speech synthesis, search

Search engine technology

Modern web search engines are complex software systems using the technology that has evolved over the years. There are several categories of search engine software: Web search engines , database or structured data search engines , and mixed search engines or enterprise search...

, and localisation.

The Company currently has 200 employees worldwide. Its research and engineering activities are in Silicon Valley and Egypt, with sales offices in the U.S. (Washington, DC and California), Kuwait, UAE (Dubai and Abu Dhabi), Oman

Oman

Oman , officially called the Sultanate of Oman , is an Arab state in southwest Asia on the southeast coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by the United Arab Emirates to the northwest, Saudi Arabia to the west, and Yemen to the southwest. The coast is formed by the Arabian Sea on the...

, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Products

• Arabic Optical Character Recognition
• Arabic Speech Recognition

Dial Directions

In 2009, Sakhr acquired Dial Directions, Inc., a U.S. Silicon Valley software company providing language applications for mobile cloud-computing environments, including wireless carriers, telematics, and “smartphones” such as the Apple iPhone to enhance its market position in the emerging mobile application & cloud computing market.

Awards

Sakhr software has won the following International awards:

• eContent Award - Arabic Language Buddy for smart phones (2010)
• Oman Portal - Arab Web Awards (2010)
• World Summit Award - (Screen reader for the blind) (2007)
• World Summit Award - Best e-content (Web Content Translation Engine - Tarjim) (2005)
• Arabian Business E-Achievement Award E-Visionary of the Year (2002)
• Internet Shopper (T4S International Group): Best Arabic Language Supported Site (GITEX Cairo 2000)
• Damtex Middle East Group: Best Arabic Application Development Company (1999)

External links

• http://www.sakhrusa.com/arabic-machine-translation-MT.html