The 2th International Symposium on Computers & Arabic Language (ISCAL) winds up its activities
Participants confirm, with efforts collaboration, Arabic Content becomes a Reality.
Dr. Al Suwaiyle honors winners in the Competition of Enriching Arabic Content

The second International Symposium on Computers and Arabic organized by KACST under the Patronage of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques concluded its activities today with three sessions through which various speakers and specialists in computer sciences and linguistics presented their work papers. The core of these papers was investigating and discussing the project of enriching Arabic Content on the internet. The symposium ended with an elaborated discussion session on King Abdullah Initiative for Arabic Content.
The last day of the symposium culminated in honoring winners in the Open Content Competition organized by King Abdullah Initiative for Arabic Content in collaboration with Google Company via Google Nawel Website. Dr. Mohammed Ibrahim Al Suwaiyel, KACST president, handed prizes to the winners who included a group of staff-doctors and students from both King Saud University and King Fahd University for Petroleum and Minerals. Dr. Al Suwaiyel also honored the winning Summer Centers in the competition of the best E-magazine, organized by KACST in collaboration with the Ministry of Education.
Dr. Abdulrahman Alhaj Salih,  President of the Algerian Arabic Language Academy started the activity of the day by a work paper titled “Identity and Creativity in Language Corpora”, reminding that the language carries the identity of its speaker but identity without creativity may make the language self-closed. Alhaj Salih pointed that the best motivation for creativity while preserving identity is to give Arab citizens the chance to achieve the required cultural and scientific level and if this could be achieved- while education is inefficient as it is now- inventors and scientist would among those citizen when sponsored by the state.
Alhaj stressed that the means to achieve this required level is the Arabic Internet that is called the Arabic Corpora and the aim of these corpora is to answer any question posed by an Arab citizen in Arabic in fields of science, technology and heritage. These corpora should be within the reach of each citizen regardless of his/ her educational level. Alhaj emphasized that this project has become a vivid reality but still need the collaboration of all efforts to mature and become complete, adding that with these corpora the Digital Arabic Content would be near to or equivalent to the English content quantitatively and qualitatively.
Alhaj invited Arab researchers to pay attention to Arabic theories in language analysis and take interest in these theories, indicating that this project is closely related to computer sciences and linguistics particularly as it covers vast areas of scientific interests and requires resorting to specific theory for the Arabic language. Alhaj concluded his paper presenting some of the basic principles for analyzing the Arabic language that are a particularity of Arab scientists only.
Then, the first session was held, chaired by Dr Abdulmalik Alsalman from King Saud University to discuss “Digitization and Access” through a paper presented by IT expert Dr. Nabil Ali under the title of “ Roadmap for Arabic Content Industry”, through which he  reviewed a future vision for the array of making the Arabic Content. This array includes acquiring, preparing, digitalizing and fostering the Content by the added- value and means of protecting the rights of suppliers and users of the Content. He also presented a more comprehensive view 0f the digital content generated by both people and machines. He concentrated on means through which Arabs can catch with the technology of ‘Semantic Web” and what it requires of smart systems to process the Arabic Language automatically.
The second session chaired by Dr.Suleman Abdul Aziz Mirdad from the Telecommunication and Information Technology Commission discussed the issue of “Specialized Content” through three work papers. The first paper was presented by Mr. Pierre Escaich, Director of Studios Operation in Ubisoft under the title of “Entertainment Content Industry” through which he presented a historical synopsis about the Industry of the Entertainment Content then moved to realities of the Entertainment Content Industry. He touched on requirements of the process of developing the Entertainment Content Industry and its infrastructure and concluded his paper talking about best practices to develop the human resources.
Mr. Chris Bendall, the Publishing Editor in Springer Publishing House presented the second paper under the title of “Scientific e-Publishing” in which he elaborated the step taken by Springer Corporation for Scientific Publishing in 2005 to secure all coming and previous titles electronically. Bendall pointed that Springer Publishing House has the lion share in the market of e-books for scientific content now because it was the first scientific publisher o take such a step. Meanwhile, he gave a glance on the development of Springer program for e-books.
Dr. Abdulaziz Al-Molhem, Assistant Undersecretary of Planning and Studies, and the General Supervisor of Information Technology in the Ministry of Culture and Information, presented the last paper in this session “E-media”, in which he reviewed dimensions of the new media, their outcomes and challenges they face particularly the construction, weak contents, the Arabic media vessels and means to overcome these challenges.
Dr. Saad Alkasabi, from Adaptive Tech-Soft, chaired the last session of the symposium that dealt with Regional & International Efforts through three work papers. The first paper, “International Content Initiatives” was presented by Yves Chenet the Director of Red Tech Consulting Corporation where he tackled the role of ITS Company and Red Tech Consulting Corporation in King Abdullah for Arabic Content that is carried out under KACST supervision.
Chenet stated that Red Tech Consulting Corporation is forming the strategy of the initiative as it also carries a measuring survey for what pioneer states are doing on the national level to accelerate the growth tempo in producing and utilizing the digital content. He indicated  that Red Tech Consulting have selected nine states to carry out the measuring process using a set of criteria including demography, maturity of the digital content market, infrastructure development and the governmental role is boosting the content. Chenet concluded his paper talking about the early results of the measuring process and its potential applications in Saudi Arabia that seeks transferring itself into information-based society.
Dr. Amin Kalak, the Coordinator of Science Projects in the Arab League Educational Cultural and Scientific Organization (ALECSO) presented the second paper titled “A Regional Experience in Developing Arabic Processing Tools”.  The paper contained an exciting scientific experience aiming at encouraging people who work in the field of automatic processing of the Arabic language. Kalak indicated that (ALECSO) in collaboration with KACST have contacted a number of scientific institutions working on developing a conjugative-analyzer for the Arabic language, inside and outside the Arabic area.  Kalak indicated that ALECSO organized a meeting for researchers to present their conjugative analyzers in the Arab Academy of Damascus then, spread out examples to test these analyzers and named an arbitration committee to choose the best of these analyzers. 
The last paper in the symposium was presented by Dr Mohammed Alqassem, Advisor for the Minister of Communications and Information Technology and Secretary General, for the National ICT Plan, under the title of “The Digital Excellence Award and supporting Arabic Content”.  Through his paper, Alqassem talked about this award set by the ministry of Communications and Information Technology in the year of 1426h for internet sites with Arabic content in order to condense the Arabic presence on the worldwide information net and to achieve the national plan for Communications and Information Technology. He indicated that the goal of this award is to encourage initiatives that participate in enriching the digital Arabic Content and spreading awareness of the importance of distinguished Arabic language sites to serve the community. Alqassem stressed that this award participated during the last years in enriching the Arabic content on the internet through honoring distinguished sites and diffusing them as it also helped in setting quality standards for internet sites that both the governmental sector and private sector can benefit from when developing their electronic sites.
The symposium concluded its works by an elaborated discussion session on “King Abdullah Initiative for Arabic Content” chaired by Dr. Mohammed Alkanhal, the supervisor of Computer and Electronics Research Institute in KACST.