Emacs Key Combinations with Arabic characters

Question

I am new to emacs. I am using two keyboard layouts Arabic & English. I need a way to execute key combinations without the need to change to English layout. Right now I got something like this:

C-ء is undefined

I need something like key-translation-map but for all emacs key combinations using arabic characters.

Answer 1

You are probably looking to select an input method.

By default, C-\ will toggle your input method, which has the practical effect that, with an English keyboard layout, you can input text in Arabic, but the keybindings for other commands will be unaffected.

You can set the default-input-method to Arabic with:

(setq-default default-input-method "arabic")

The docstring for default-input-method says that:

Documentation: Default input method for multilingual text (a string). This is the input method activated automatically by the command toggle-input-method (C-\).