I was the Chief Auditor for the Iraqi anti-corruption agency (Commission on Public Integrity - CPI) in 2004-2006 and I set up a Ernst & Young contract (middle east office) to create and present a 7 topic set of training courses IN ARABIC (no english version, which I now regret), including operational audit, financial audit, cost accounting, time management and some others. They were given in early 2005 to about 250 Iraqi internal auditors from CPI, the Board of Supreme Audit (BSA - like GAO in the States), plus staff from several of the Ministry Inspector General Departments.
I have the files in
Arabic only (not english)which include the rather large student manual, plus the
Powerpoints, so you have to have a PC that is set up to use the Arabic alphabet. The US government paid for the courses (and E&W also has rights to use them), and I consider it public
domain. I will attach those files here by April 24th, 2009. Today is April 19th - but give me until April 24, 2009 to actually upload and attach the files here - I have
to find them first.
If you have a need to get group training in internal audit topics in Arabic in the Middle East, I really recommend contacting the middle east office of E&W (either in Egypt or Lebanon) because they did a superb job of developing (to IIA standards) and presenting training for my program, flying in specialists from outside Iraq, into Baghdad to give the courses. They were the only "big 4" firm with an office in Iraq in 2004-2006, staffed all by Iraqi locals and many spoke english.
Additionally,
I am planning to visit the Orlando, FL world headquarters of the Institute of Internal Auditors this week (I live nearby), and talk to them about setting up training AND translation programs in Arabic and other middle east languages (Dari & Pashto for Afghanistan). If anyone knows who runs the State Dept. or USAID programs to fund and provide technical translations, please let me know.
Also, if you don't know about "Intosai" http://www.intosai.org/ , they are a UN funded European and Middle East Supreme Audit Association and they have many documents (I think, including the GAO Yellow Book) translated into Arabic. They have sub groups for countries speaking the six official UN languages, which includes Arabic (that subgroup is Arabosai).
Additionally, SIGIR (Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction) publishes their quarterly reports and possibly some audit reports in Arabic at www.Sigir.mil. Later, I expect SIGAR (for Afghanistan) will do the same for their upcoming reports.
Finally, some US Embassies in the Middle East have "Arabic book programs" where they actually pay to translate and print copies of selected English language books into Arabic. If you use a Google search for "US Embassy Amman Jordan" and look for the "book program", it will list many translated books that can be ordered from them. Unfortunately, very few are business, accounting or audit related, but you might find something of interest, and I think they had one of Peter Drucker's management books in Arabic. The Iraq Embassy did not have such a program at least in 2006, but you might also check other middle east US embassies like Egypt.
vj
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