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.