CYRSH TECHNOLOGIES: Searching Phonetically [Archives:2000/26/Science & Technology]

“This is incredible” is what one thinks about the project implemented by a solely Yemeni team in the heart of the Silicon Valley, California, USA.
Cyrsh Technology (www.cyrsh.com) is what they call it. A software product that will start a revolution in the way we search and retrieve data, not only on the internet, but virtually everywhere there is a database of any kind.
Last Wednesday, the team of Cyrsh, consisting of Abdullah Faris, Ghamdan Al-Anisi and Hilal Ahmed Saeed, gave a presentation describing their technology that is hitting the market and bringing about a revolutionary change in the way we search the Internet.
Attended by a large number of people interested to know more about the software, the presentation started with an introduction to the technology in general by Abdullah Faris.
“Imagine you want to search for an Arabic word in the English-dominated Internet. If you misspell the word even with one single letter, the search through conventional search methods will fail. However, if you search with Cyrsh, not only would you get your results, but you can get it even if you enter the search string with any language at all.” This is how Abdullah Faris started his speech. He then gave an example of the world ‘waleed’. If we search for Waleed in the database, which does have Waleed but in the spelling “Walid”, it will fail in the conventional search method. However using Cyrsh, the words that sound like Walid will be fetched. All that the program does is that it analyzes the phonetic structure of the word being searched, no matter in which language it is and then compares its phonetic structure to whatever is similar to it when being read. Hence, a search for Walid would let the program analyze it to “Wa-l-ee-d”, and anything whose sounds include “Wa-l-i-d”, “We-l-ie-d”, W-l-ee-d”, and tens of other combinations, would result in a similar phonetic sound as the searched word. Therefore, any of these words would be a result of the search, giving a lot of flexibility to the way the word is entered. This applies for all languages simply because every word in any language has a phonetic structure, and this structure is what is important when searching through Cyrsh.
Later in the session, Ghamdan Al-Anisi demonstrated how the technology can be used on the Internet, and how it is actually currently being used through an agent that anyone can download from their site at www.cyrsh.com. It is worth mentioning that Internic, the organization responsible for legalizing and organizing the Internet has agreed to let this search mechanism be on the third generation of Internet site addressing (3rd generation of URLs) and also for the e-mail of the future.
In brief terms, this means that the technology will be a global mechanism for all Internet users to use in order to retrieve website pages and send emails.
Despite the technicalities and scientific terms used in the presentation, the session seemed to be quite interesting and informative. Not only did it shed light on the genius of Yemenis who had worked hard to reach this level of excellence in their field of creating Cyrsh, but it also brought to mind the potential of phonetic based search in the future. The technology’s greatest benefit is that it would bridge the gap between people with little knowledge of the English language and others.
Amazingly, before the end of the session, Mr. Hilal Ahmed Saeed gave a brief introduction to the way Arabic was introduced to this technology, and how the conversion of phonetic words in Arabic was implemented. “We were further convinced of the strength and beauty of the Arabic language during the days of researching and programming for phonetic search in Arabic.” he said.
As Yemen Times, we were amazed to see how smart and dedicated these young Yemenis are. It was not easy to have this idea reach this level of attention. This was a result of determination, hard work, and dedication to this fascinating new software that seems to be gaining more momentum every day. “I knew that this technology would have a great future. But I never imagined that we would grow so fast.” said Abdullah Faris about his company, which has gained more than 8 million dollars of profit since its establishment, and is expected to have a capital exceeding $1 billion within a few months.
By Nasri Al-Saqqaf

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