Storymaps - Does Not Support Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) Text Format

GiovanniGama

I am translating ESRI Story Maps stories in various languages in an effort to provide equitable access to critical information. However, I am having a lot of problems with creating an Arabic version. While in Story Maps, I can designate the site's "language" to Arabic, it does not affect how the story can be formatted to better suite Arabic readers.

If it does support MSA it is not evident nor intuitive to switch between formatting settings. The current settings create a lot of in-text problems (e.g., changes spelling of words, all punctuations are incorrectly placed, bullets are only right aligned....). It would be great if story maps supported as many languages as possible in support of DEI.

If not already implemented, how long can we anticipate to wait until we can develop Arabic (MSA) products that are culturally appropriate?

CristinaCañizares

Hello, sorry you're having trouble translating stories. I'm Cristina and I'm on the StoryMaps team. You can  set your story's language and localize number and date formatting in the story builder from the "Story settings" menu under the ellipsis menu (...). You can also change your story builder language to Arabic under the "Language, number, and date format" options from the "My settings menu" located under your name and profile image. The story builder supports forty languages. This should work for translated stories created in the builder. This, however, will not work for stories translated through a third party web browser as they are independent of the product. I hope this helps.