Under the Sponsorship of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques
Local and International Specialists Examine Realities of Making the Arabic Content within the 2nd International Symposium on Computer & Arabic Language
The 2nd International Symposium on Computer & Arabic Language would be held Saturday, Under the Sponsorship of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques and KACST as an organizer, during the period 21-23 Shawal 1430 H corresponding to 10 – 12 October 2009 in King Faisel Conference Hall.
Dr. Mohammed Ibrahim Al Sauwaiyle, KACST president and the general supervisor of the symposium indicated that KACST, within this symposium, is keen to mix distinguished expertise in this field and display stories of success through polarizing highly qualified experts and speakers on both the local and international levels. He pointed that activities of the symposium include reviewing regional successful experiences in making the Arabic content and challenges these experiences met besides projects of King Abdullah Initiative for Arabic Content.
Dr. Al Sauwaiyle highlighted that launching this initiative came in response to King Abdullah’s sensing of the weakness of the current Arabic content as the percentage of the digital Arabic content does not exceed 0,3% of the overall content available on the internet while Arabic speakers represent 7% of the total world population. The initiative emphasizes and boosts the king’s efforts and initiatives to flourish and diffuse the massage of Arabic language, scientific knowledge and advanced technologies. The initiative also backs up resolutions of the 19th tournament of the Council of the Arab League held in Riyadh under the presidency of King Abdullah. These resolutions called to activate the presence of the Arabic Languages in all fields including communication media, information and the internet.
KACST president added that the initiative includes direct applications of the Arabic content that extend to education, translation and scientific research while it participates in building the society of knowledge and economy based on this knowledge. Meanwhile, the initiative fulfills the insisting need to bridge the digital gap so as to allow constructing systems for knowledge buildup.
KACST supervises executing King Abdullah Initiative for Arabic Content in coordination with the concerned authorities. This initiative realizes the importance of the lingual content on the internet its effect on the national economy and consequently on the life of both man and society. KACST held a number of workshops, scientific meetings and symposia that gathered experts and specialists including this symposium that KACST has the honor to organize.
KACST started carrying out a number of projects under the umbrella of this initiative either solely or in collaborations with other institutes. The Interactive Computer Dictionary with ALESCO is an example of these projects. It is expected to be completed within one year from now. This lexicon is distinguished from the other lexicons by Algorithms of etymology and analysis that make it more comprehensive.
Meanwhile, KACST is running the project of translating books of strategic technologies that comprises 33 books in 3 varied versions: the first version is for non-specialists to diffuse scientific awareness of technology and help the normal reader to absorb definitions and concepts of technology; the second version is a curriculum one for university students who study these topics; while the third version is an advanced one for specialists in this field.
As for competitions, KACST has organized number of competitions to enrich the Arabic content such as NAWEl that has been organized in collaboration with Google for best articles in all fields of human knowledge. A good number of these articles harvested positive comments from visitors, which by their turn enrich the Arab content and encourage Arab users of the internet to effectively participate in the electronic space to cherish the presence of their Arabic language on the internet. In collaboration with the Saudi Ministry of Education, KACST organized the competition of the best electronic magazine for summers centers with the aim of igniting the competitive spirit among students, males and females, in fields of electronic publishing, press and journalistic editing besides designing and managing the content on the internet. Winners of these two completions would be honored during this symposium.
In of the area of multimedia content, KACST recently signed an agreement with Index Holding Company to establish a Multimedia centre to develop national capabilities in fields of animations, graphics, multimedia, and computer aided design likewise computer games. The agreement also targets preparing and qualifying a team of Saudi trainees in this field as it includes training Saudi National cadres for periods ranging from 3 months to 2 years on the professional works in multimedia. These practical and academic training programs would be the first of its type in KSA.
As for the Open Content that is empowered by the unprecedented success of the Open Sources, efforts were exerted to circulate the experience on all internet contents such as Permit of Creative Generalities and Alliance of Open Content. To develop and enrich the open content, KACST, represented in the initiative team, organized the first workshop in this effect during the period of 20-21/ 1/ 1430, which witnessed the participation of researchers in varied scientific specializations representing scientific institutions inside and outside KSA. The workshop recommended projects to enrich the open content including competitions that the initiative team started actually.
Considering the important role of the open-source-software in designing the infrastructure of the Content, KACST also signed an agreement with the United Nations development Program to establish a National Center for software with the aim of sustaining and localizing applications that serve the governmental sector, business, educational institutions, training services, technical support and performing empirical projects. Establishing this program comes as an extension to KACST’s efforts during the previous years to develop and localize various open-source software, tools and Arabic calligraphies that by their turn pushed ahead the process of development in this field.
As for the specialized scientific content, KACST is currently working on preparing the project of “Issuing Arbitrated Scientific Magazines on Strategic Technologies” with the purpose of issuing an arbitrated scientific magazine quantitatively and qualitatively. For this purpose, KACST contracted with ‘Springer” the international publishing house to provide the latest technologies and techniques in managing scientific content, receiving requests for publishing and directing them to arbitration. In the same time, KACST is working on the project of electronically documenting the national intellectual production. This project aims at calculating sources of specialized national information in science and technology fields, specifying the copy right of these resources, classifying them and availing them in full text in a coming phase through a digital library on the internet for all researchers which by its turn bolsters up efforts of national development in these sectors.
In view of the fact that initiative of Arabic Content does not belong to a specified body or authority by itself but a collaboration of efforts to serve the Arabic Content and particularly in KSA, the initiative is supervised by a Supreme Supervising Committee presided by KACST president and the has the membership of representatives of the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Ministry of Islamic, Endowments Call (Dawa) and Guidance Affairs, Ministry of Culture and Information, Ministry of Higher Education, Ministry of Education, King Abdul Aziz Public Library and King Abdul Aziz Foundation for Research and Archives. To specify roles of these varied ministries and institutions and their initiative-related projects, KACST is working on the project of setting the strategy of enriching Arabic Content that has been launched this month and covers about 8 months. National teams representing academic, educational, governmental and private institutions work on this project to develop specified mechanisms and procedures to enrich Arabic Content with its varied aspects.
It is also worth mentioning that KACST Computer Institute has allotted a number of its works to develop databases and tools to handle Arabic language; out of which “The Saudi Bank for Phonetics” can be mentioned as an example. The technology of contacting the computer is based on data of this bank to identify Arabic phonetics and words. The bank is rich with phonetics and their variations to enable speakers and particularly Saudis to communicate with computers regardless of age, dialect and gender. KACST in collaboration with IBM Company developed a computer system that enables the speaker to communicate with computers via the telephone network using this bank. Within the same scope, a computer system for automatic reading and reproducing written texts vocally has been developed. All these systems have great varied benefits in education, medical applications and serving handicaps besides some many other benefits.
KACST Computer Institute has also developed an automatic system to put articulation marks on the Arabic letters. The Automatic Translator of Arabic names is one more example of the valuable products of this institute where it writes Arabic names in Latin letters to unify writing these names. In the area of automatic identification on printed Arabic texts, the institute developed a computer system that enables Arab users to scan these texts and transform them into editable texts.
•For more information about the symposium, kindly visit the link www.iscal.org.sa
•For more information about King Abdullah Initiative for the Arabic Content, kindly visit the link: www.econtent.org.sa.