By the tiswa editorial team, from the official sources listed at the end of this guide. How we write our guides
The first English sentence a computing student has to decode is not in a textbook. It is red text in a terminal: IndexError: list index out of range. Know that index means position and you fix it in a minute; do not, and you paste it into a search bar and wait. Every table below puts the English first for that reason, then the Arabic you will write in an Arabic report.
Which ten terms cover your first programming course?
These ten carry most of Introduction to Programming. Use every one in a small program before you move on to networks or databases.
| English | Arabic | Where you meet it |
|---|---|---|
| Variable | متغير | Line one of any program. |
| Data type | نوع البيانات | TypeError messages. |
| Function | دالة | Every assignment after week three. |
| Parameter / argument | المعامل / الوسيط | Defining a function versus calling it. |
| Condition (if) | شرط | Every decision the program makes. |
| Loop | حلقة تكرار | for and while. |
| Array / list | مصفوفة / قائمة | IndexError messages. |
| Syntax | قواعد الكتابة | SyntaxError messages. |
| Bug / debugging | خلل / تتبع الأخطاء | The night before the deadline. |
| Algorithm | خوارزمية | Theory questions in the exam. |
Programming terms from objects to compilers
| English | Arabic | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Object | كائن | A unit bundling data and behaviour. |
| Class | صنف | The template objects are created from. |
| Inheritance | الوراثة | One class taking on another's features. |
| Recursion | الاستدعاء الذاتي | A function calling itself until a base case. |
| Compiler | المترجم | Turns all the code into machine code before it runs. |
| Interpreter | المفسر | Runs code line by line. |
| Runtime error | خطأ وقت التشغيل | Fails during execution, like dividing by zero. |
| Pseudocode | الشيفرة الزائفة | An algorithm written in near-English. |
| API | واجهة برمجة التطبيقات | The rules two programs talk through. |
| Library | مكتبة برمجية | Ready-made functions you call. |
| Framework | إطار عمل | A ready structure that calls your code. |
Interviewers ask about library versus framework more than students expect. Short version: you call a library; a framework calls you.
How do Git terms play out in a team project?
Most computing graduation projects run on a shared repository. Here are the steps in the order you will live them:
- Repository (المستودع)
One teammate creates it; it holds the code and its whole change history.
- Clone (النسخ)
Everyone copies the repository to their own laptop.
- Branch (الفرع)
Each person opens a branch for their feature and leaves the main copy alone.
- Commit (الإيداع)
Save changes with a short message saying what changed.
- Merge (الدمج) and merge conflict
Fold the branch back into main. If two people edited the same line, Git raises a conflict and someone resolves it by hand.
- Unit test (اختبار الوحدة)
Before merging, run small tests that check each piece.
Network terms in Arabic
| English | Arabic | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| IP address | عنوان IP | The number that identifies a device on a network. |
| DNS | نظام أسماء النطاقات | Turns a site name into an IP address. |
| Router | الموجه | Moves data between networks. |
| Switch | المبدل | Connects devices inside a local network. |
| LAN / WAN | شبكة محلية / واسعة | One building, or distant sites. |
| Bandwidth | عرض النطاق | The most data a link carries per second. |
| Latency | زمن التأخير | How long data takes to arrive. |
| Packet | حزمة | A small chunk of transmitted data. |
| Protocol | بروتوكول | The rules devices exchange data by. |
| Port | منفذ | A number naming a service, such as 443 for HTTPS. |
| Subnet | شبكة فرعية | A slice of a larger network. |
| Firewall | جدار الحماية | Allows or blocks traffic by rule. |
| Cloud computing | الحوسبة السحابية | Servers and storage on demand over the internet. |
Databases in one line of SQL
Take SELECT name FROM students WHERE gpa > 4. Most of the chapter is in it. students is a table (جدول), each student a record or row (سجل), name and gpa are fields (حقل). The whole line is a query (استعلام). Link students to a courses table by student number, and that number is the primary key (المفتاح الأساسي) in one table and a foreign key (المفتاح الأجنبي) in the other.
- Index (الفهرس): speeds up searches at the cost of extra space.
- Normalization (التطبيع): splitting tables to cut repetition.
- Transaction (المعاملة): steps that all happen or none do, like a bank transfer.
- Schema (المخطط): the description of tables, fields and relations.
- NoSQL: non-relational stores holding documents or key-value pairs.
What are the security terms in the Saudi national controls?
Do your co-op at a government entity and you will hear "ECC" in week one. These are the Essential Cybersecurity Controls from the National Cybersecurity Authority. The current edition, ECC-2:2024, has 4 main domains, 28 subdomains, 108 main controls and 92 subcontrols.1 The four domains are cybersecurity governance, defense, resilience, and third-party and cloud computing cybersecurity, all built on confidentiality, integrity and availability.
| English | Arabic | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Encryption | التشفير | Data readable only with the key. |
| Hashing | دالة التجزئة | A fixed-length value not meant to be reversed; how passwords are stored. |
| Authentication | التحقق من الهوية | Who are you? |
| Authorization | منح الصلاحية | What are you allowed to do? |
| Multi-factor authentication | التحقق متعدد العناصر | A password plus a code sent to your phone. |
| Phishing | التصيد الاحتيالي | A message impersonating a trusted sender. |
| Malware / ransomware | برمجية ضارة / برمجية فدية | The second locks files and demands money. |
| Vulnerability | ثغرة | A weakness that can be exploited. |
| Penetration testing | اختبار الاختراق | An authorised break-in attempt to find holes. |
| Patch | تحديث أمني | A fix that closes a hole. |
Which translations mislead you?
| Word | Misleading Arabic | Better |
|---|---|---|
| Authorization | تفويض | منح الصلاحية. تفويض is delegation, a management idea. |
| Argument | جدال | وسيط, the value passed to a function. |
| Array | a maths matrix | A programming array, often one-dimensional. |
| Class | فصل | صنف. فصل is a classroom or a term. |
| Cache | cookies | ذاكرة مؤقتة. Cookies are files a site stores in your browser. |
| Switch | a light switch | A network device, or a switch statement in code. |
Hardware and AI, briefly. CPU is وحدة المعالجة المركزية, RAM الذاكرة العشوائية, storage وحدة التخزين, operating system نظام التشغيل and its kernel النواة; a virtual machine is آلة افتراضية. Machine learning is تعلم الآلة, a dataset مجموعة البيانات, a model النموذج, and overfitting فرط التخصيص: the model memorises its training data and fails on anything new.
How do you study computer terms so they stick?
Write code with them, not flashcards about them. Build one tiny program per chapter that uses every new word, then explain it out loud in Arabic to someone outside the major. If you cannot say what a foreign key does in Arabic, you have memorised the word without the idea.
Where you study changes the priority. At King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dhahran, courses and research are done solely in English,2 so KFUPM students need this page for the Arabic side. King Saud University's College of Computer and Information Sciences has five departments: information technology, computer science, computer engineering, information systems and software engineering,3 each leaning on its own slice of these terms.
To compare tracks, read the computer science major guide, the cybersecurity major guide and the software engineering major guide. Starting from zero? Try learn programming from zero, then learn Python and learn SQL.
