Considering that the two most popular LIFT08 videos cover gaming, I'll pass along this recent post from Future-Making Serious Games.

Quirkat, a Jordanian interactive firm, and BreakAway, Ltd, a US-based game developer, announced last month the release of the world's first trilingual mobile game. Offering gameplay in Arabic, English, and French, Tariq's Treasure is available through a distribution network of regional mobile operators across the Middle East. Quirkat also recently launched a new online gaming portal, Fuzztak.

The firms previously collaborated on last year's Arabian Lords. In this bilingual (Arabic/English) real-time strategy game for PC, players become an "enterprising merchant lord" in the 7th through 13th centuries.

For Arabian Lords reviews, go to Middle East Gamers and ITP.net. For interviews with Quirkat's CEO regarding the game, go to ArabianBusiness.com and Maktoob. From the second interview, an interesting point:

"Our second biggest challenge was adapting the strategy game terminology for the Arabic language. Classical Arabic doesn’t naturally lend itself to gaming and with the increased uptake of internet and computer literacy across the region, we found ourselves setting a new lexicon of Arabic terms."

It reminded me of an older family member who was unable to keep up-to-date with his native tongue once he began speaking English as a young boy (in the US). While visiting relatives overseas about a decade ago, conversations would inevitably include something technological that had been invented after the 1940s and he would have to ask for a description of the item or its purpose.

He could understand everything else they said quite well - just not any terms (e.g., "satellite dish") that hadn't existed during his childhood. Seeing that experience, I'm sure reconciling language with gaming terminology must have been a challenging task for the game's creators. Check out this "Behind the Scenes" section, which touches on a few other issues faced by the cross-cultural development team.