Friday, September 9, 2022 – 5:09 pm
DUBAI, 9th September, WAM / The Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation organized a virtual panel discussion entitled “The Arabic Language and the Virtual Space” as part of the “Bil Arabi” initiative, one of the Foundation’s initiatives aimed at encouraging Arabs to use their mother tongue through the Internet and social media channels and to contribute In developing the cognitive role of the Arabic language in the international community in general and the Arab community in particular.
Dr. Ibrahim Fathi Moawad, Dean of the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering at New Mansoura University, Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the Faculty of Computers and Information at Ain Shams University, and Dr. Ahmed Hassan Youssef, Dean of the Faculty of Information Technology and Computer Science at Nile University, President of the Egypt branch of the “IEEE” International Organization, moderated the session and Emirati media Walid. Marzouki.
The session discussed many axes and topics related to the presence of Arabic content in the digital space, its production, means of development, development and spread, its most prominent characteristics and challenges, in addition to the future of the Arabic language and the employment of artificial intelligence and modern technology in spreading the Arabic language within the digital space.
Dr. Ahmed Hassan Youssef spoke about the types of content within the digital space, which varies between text, news or audio content, or in the form of images, videos or documents…noting that the diverse Arabic language is distinguished from the rest of the world’s languages in terms of its eloquence and the diversity of its characteristics, which include For example, but not limited to the science of eloquence, which includes metonymy, simile, metaphor, badi science and semantics, which poses a great challenge to text analyzers and their ability to understand and convert these texts or translate and transfer them to different languages of the world.
He explained that the mechanisms for supporting Arabic content in the digital space include new technologies such as machine translation, recognition of audible voices and converting them into readable texts, as well as converting texts written in the vernacular into the official standard language.
For his part, Dr. Ibrahim Fathi Moawad said that the Arabic language has become the fourth globally in terms of prevalence after English, Chinese and Spanish, and that the percentage of Arabic content spread within the digital space has recently increased from 1 percent to 5.7 percent, while the English language constitutes about 60 percent of the content in the space. digital.
He stressed that the most important challenges facing the spread of the Arabic language are the nature and characteristics of the language in terms of drawing and shape of letters, diacritics and the complex rules of the Arabic language, and that work must be done to increase the spread of the Arabic language by supporting scientific research and investing more in software and artificial intelligence techniques, in addition to computing the Arabic language to increase The ability of the computer to identify the forms and quality of Arabic content.
It is noteworthy that the “Bil Arabi” initiative focuses on providing various activities through digital media channels and social media, and spreading awareness of the aesthetics of the Arabic language and its treasures, which are related to the heritage and authentic Arab history.
Wm/ Munira Al-Sumaiti/Abdul Nasser Moneim