News

Google Expands Gemini For Workspace To Arabic Users

Starting this week, users can access Gemini’s AI capabilities in Google Docs, Sheets, Drive, and Gmail in 17 additional languages, including Arabic.

Published

2 years ago

February 21, 2025

Nour Nasir

Google

Google is broadening the capabilities of Gemini for Workspace, which now includes Arabic among a growing list of supported languages. Starting this week, users can access Gemini’s AI capabilities in the side panel of Google Docs, Sheets, Drive, and Gmail in the following 17 new languages:

Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese.

With this update, users can now draft social media posts in Docs, summarize complex files in Drive, or manage their Gmail inbox — all in their preferred language. Additionally, Gemini’s image generation feature now supports these languages as well.

Here are some of the ways Gemini can improve the way teams work:

Gmail Integration: Sorting through emails can be overwhelming, especially for customer service teams. Gemini can now filter unread messages from clients and even draft responses in the user’s preferred language, streamlining communication.
Docs Assistance: Marketing professionals can use Gemini to help craft more compelling content. Whether it’s overcoming writer’s block or drafting promotional copy for a product launch, Gemini provides instant, language-specific support.
Drive Summaries: Sales teams often spend too much time searching for information across multiple documents. Gemini can now scan files, presentations, and notes, then present a concise summary in seconds — helping users prepare for key meetings more efficiently.

Also Read: Getting Started With Google Gemini: A Beginner’s Guide

Gemini’s language capabilities go beyond drafting and summarizing. Users can research topics or brainstorm ideas in any of 40 supported languages using the Gemini app. Additionally, for international teams, Google Meet now offers translated captions in 69 languages, and Google Chat can automatically translate messages, making global collaboration even easier.

Related Topics:Artificial Intelligence Gemini Google

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News

Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon

Foreign visitors will be the first users to benefit, but whether Syria’s own banks and cardholders follow is still an open question.

Published

2 weeks ago

August 27, 2026

Dana Saadeh

visa's return to syria starts with a test and a bank in lebanon

Visa is returning to Syria. Its first live international card transaction in the country was a test rather than a launch, and the milestone event ran through a Lebanese bank.

The acquirer (the bank on the merchant’s side of a card payment) was Fransabank Lebanon, with Paymera as the other named partner. Nadim Moujaes, who heads a Fransabank Group subsidiary, describes the test as both the culmination of “longstanding efforts to link Syria back to international payment networks” and “the first step in a larger path”.

Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa makes the first electronic payment in Syria using a @Visa card at a store in Damascus, following the lifting of US sanctions on Syria. pic.twitter.com/lpAN7nQ6Fc

— Tech Magazine (@TechMGZN) August 27, 2026

“We are excited to have successfully tested live transactions today as we plan to enable international visitors to use their Visa cards while in Syria,” says Leila Serhan, Visa’s senior vice president and group country manager for the North Africa, Levant and Pakistan region. Although a significant first step, that plan doesn’t come with a hard date for when a visitor’s card will work normally.

Mohammed Safwat Raslan, governor of the Central Bank of Syria, says the test paves the way for international card acceptance in Syria and that maintaining strong compliance, risk management and operational controls will remain essential. Serhan likewise stresses that Visa has worked within applicable legal, regulatory and compliance requirements. For a test transaction, it seems there was a great deal of attention paid to the rules, with the entire operation being carefully managed.

Also Read: Lebanon’s 5G Era Begins With 150 Stations And A $1M Budget

The test is the latest step in a sequence that began in December 2025, when Visa announced a strategic roadmap to support Syria’s integration into the global digital economy. In February 2026 it hosted its first industry gathering of banks, ecosystem partners and policymakers in Damascus and, the same month, signed an agreement with Syria’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in San Francisco.

Michel Kattouah, Paymera’s CEO, called the test “the return of international card acceptance,” but while that’s positive news, there’s no word yet on when a Syrian bank will issue a Visa card to a Syrian customer.