Search Issue: Titles with/without Arabic Definite Article "ال" are not treated as variations

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AI-generated summary

The user is experiencing a search issue on their Discourse forum with content in Persian and Arabic, where topic titles with and without the Arabic definite article ال (al-) are not treated as variations. For example, searching for حسین بن زید does not return الحسین بن زید and vice versa. The desired behavior is for the search to automatically handle the presence or absence of ال and return both topics without requiring users to manually use wildcards. The user is looking for a setting, plugin, or indexing improvement to enable this automatic normalization for Arabic/Persian titles, as seen in serkhelesheyi’s initial post.

1

Hello

I am managing a Discourse forum with content in Persian and Arabic. I’ve encountered a search issue with topic titles containing the Arabic definite article “ال” (al-) .

Problem

I have two topics:

  • الحسین بن زید (with “ال”)
  • حسین بن زید (without “ال”)

When searching for one title, the other is not included in the results.

Desired Behavior

I expect searching for either "حسین بن زید " or "الحسین بن زید " to return both topics. The presence or absence of “ال” should be handled automatically by the search, similar to how variations are often treated in English search. Users should not need to manually use wildcards (like ? or * ) to find both variations.

Current Behavior

The search is too specific, only matching the exact title entered. This means the search algorithm doesn’t normalize or ignore the “ال” for better discoverability.

Question

Is there a setting , plugin , or indexing improvement in Discourse to enable this automatic normalization for Arabic/Persian titles? How can I make the search treat titles with and without “ال” as variations of the same term without requiring manual wildcard input from users?

Any guidance is appreciated.

Thank you.

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