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The main screen of the program
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The quiz itself
Inspiration
The spark for this project came when two passions in my life crossed paths: my obsession with languages, most recently Arabic, and my love for graphic design. Still new to the language, I set out on creating visual art using arabic text, and was astounded by the world of Arabic typefaces. I had much difficulty reading many of the popular fonts, due to their unique stylized quirks. Arabeasy was created to speed up the learning process by exposing users to the wildest Arabic fonts out there.
What it does
Arabeasy (a play on the term 'arabizi,' transliterated arabic) is a fun educational tool that gives new Arabic learners a taste of the wide variety of scripts they will see. The program consists of a 60 second quiz, where a random Arabic word is displayed using a random wild font, and the user has to select the correct transliteration of the word. The fast paced experience is both fun and effective for learning how to recognize words quickly.
How I built it
The bulk of this project was built in python, making use of pygame. This involved a lot of trial and error, however I ended up with a user experience I am very proud of. The visuals for Arabeasy are made in Adobe Illustrator & Photoshop. The word bank and translations were generated using OpenAI's ChatGPT.
Challenges I ran into
There was no shortage of challenges during these 36 hours. One hurdle I had to tackle was the lack of native Arabic text rendering in pygame! I almost thought this was the end for arabeasy, but after a long scout for solutions, I stumbled upon the community edition of pygame. This fork of the library made by volunteers had a perfect easy fix to my issue!
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
I am very proud of completing this project in the first place. I was not planning on attending solo, and was quite demotivated at the start, but I managed to push through to the very end and I have a finished product to show for it!
What I learned
I learned a lot during my first ever hackathon. One important lesson I gained during these few days is how to stay motivated for extended periods of time. I found myself on the verge of giving up many times, but developed strategies to keep myself coming back to work.
What's next for arabeasy!
This is far from the end for this project! I plan to port this tool to the web where it will be much easier to access. I want to make use of OpenAI's API to generate more words in real time, and I am planning to expand this application to other languages as well!
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