French language dominates the ministries’ websites

Controversy over the use of the Arabic language and the debate over the slang led Echorouk to check out some official websites of the Algerian Ministries and Economic Institutions and some official bodies, to see the used language, and to search for a place for the Arabic language in these websites, in the midst of the dominance of the French language in the speeches and letters of officials and Algerian economists.

Process of analyzing several official websites revealed to us the dominance of the Arabic language on the majority of Algerian official bodies’ websites, from the presidency to the General Secretariat of the Government, Ministries of Interior, Foreign, Justice, Commerce, Culture, Housing, Post and Information Technologies, Youth and Sports. In addition to Algiers official website, as all of them are written in Arabic and translated in the French version. But what is surprising is that some of the ministries’ websites are entirely written in French with a complete absence of the Arab language, and this is what we have observed in the official website of the Industry and Mines Ministry, which is written in French only, and the website of the Ministry of Health and Hospital’s Reform, in addition to the Water Resources and Environment Ministries’ websites, where it is written that the Arabic version will be created soon.

English language is mostly absent in Algerian websites, as it is  modestly used in some websites, for example, the official website of the National Gendarmerie General Directorate and the Arabic and French versions,  alike the Ministry of National Defense, Foreign Affairs and the General Secretariat of Government Affairs, but English is strongly used in the official websites of Algerian economic institutions, for its importance in communicating with foreigners, similar to the website of Sonatrach hydrocarbons company, which also used Arabic and French, while Air Algerie used in its website the English and French with the total absence of the Arabic, but NAFTAL company used French only.

Best Algerian Website which uses more than one language is the official website of the National People’s Assembly, which uses three languages: Arabic, French, English and Tamazight, which is absent largely, in the Algerian electronic arena.