Tag Archives: Arabic

Developments in Machine Translation of Arabic

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There’s a fair amount of news about technologies for machine based technologies for translation of Arabic. AppTek announced “Quick Translate,” a free machine translation service, available on its website. According to the company’s announcement,

Quick Translate showcases AppTek’s innovative hybrid approach to machine translation (MT), tested as the most accurate and best-of-breed MT of its kind. The service covers English and a variety of other languages (bidirectional): Arabic, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Turkish, PersianDari, Urdu, Pashto-English, Bahasa Indonesian, Tagalog, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Ukrainian, Hebrew and Dutch.

Hybrid MT systems take advantage of the strengths of both rule-based and statistical approaches, while mitigating their weaknesses. AppTek’s HMT solution provides a full integration of both MT methodologies, rather than simply adding rules to the statistical system or a minor statistical module to the rule-based engine. Using the company’s statistical MT platform and augmenting it with its rich rule-based MT engine, AppTek’s HMT solution raises the bar for MT design. The three key translation quality parameters of MT systems – fluency, informativeness, and adequacy – are now supported in one comprehensive system with greater performance, quality and accuracy.

(via PR Press Release)
Research into more robust systems continues, however. Last Wednesday Computerworld reported that BBN Technologies received $14 million

from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) this week to continue developing its speech and text technology.
BBN has now taken in over $30 million from DARPA over the past few years to fill out the agency’s Global Autonomous Language Exploitation (GALE) program. The goal of GALE is to translate and distill foreign language material (television shows and newspapers) in near real-time, highlight salient information, and store the results in a searchable database — all with more than 90% accuracy by the end of the program. Through this process, GALE would help U.S. analysts recognize critical information in foreign languages quickly so they could act on it in a timely fashion.

So, walk cialis mg about half an hour to decrease about 41% possibility of the risk of ED. The sad thing is that this happens while some body is searching for the effective anti-impotency solution as he is often misguided by the various false medication patterns available in the market. cheap viagra in usa click to find out Most times it has nothing to do with preparing to be viagra in kanada crestfallen is generally some sort of a lot anticipated step. Though its treating possibilities are quite effective and have already helped thousands of women all over the lowest price for cialis world, its side effects have produced all-inclusive apprehensions. On a related note, Critical Media also announced the development of the Critical TV

a Web-based platform that aggregates Arabic television news broadcasts and almost immediately translates the speech into English-language text.
The text is instantly keyword searchable in English.

via FederalComputerWeek

Anger over eviction of Palestinian families in Jerusalem / Fear over shootings at a club for gay youth in Tel Aviv

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Britain has joined United Nations and American diplomats in condemning Israel’s eviction of two Palestinian families from a predominately Arab neighbourhood that Jewish families plan to occupy.

via Israel provokes international anger over eviction of Palestinian families in Jerusalem – Telegraph.

Israeli police are hunting for a masked man who opened fire at a gay youth club in Tel Aviv, killing two people in an attack that struck fear among the liberal city’s homosexual community

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I simply don’t understand how such things come to pass.

University of Michigan's Islamic Manuscripts collection going online – AnnArbor.com

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This is an interesting project, an effort to turn the cataloging of a distinct and unusual set of texts to the scholarly community as a whole.

The University of Michigan Special Collections Library needs help cataloguing its vast Islamic Manuscripts Collection.
But the library doesn’t plan to hire an expert. Instead, almost all of its 1,250 pieces are being scanned in-house to put the work on the Internet.
And the library hopes interested scholars will get involved…
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Read more about the project at this page: University of Michigan’s Islamic Manuscripts collection going online – AnnArbor.com.
(Thanks to Nancy Millichap)

Maths and science to be taught in English – The National Newspaper

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ABU DHABI–All pupils in state high schools will be taught maths and science in English by 2012, the Abu Dhabi Education Council (Adec) said yesterday.
At the launch of its 10-year strategic plan, Adec said it aimed to see pupils graduating with equal proficiency in English and Arabic.
In a concerted effort to turn out better qualified school-leavers, from this August the school day will also be extended by 90 minutes in all state high schools in the emirate. Pupils in all Abu Dhabi’s state schools will study for 10 extra days a year.
It follows the publication of results showing that only 13 per cent of applicants to federal universities scored enough in their English exams to bypass remedial courses.
via Maths and science to be taught in English – The National Newspaper.

Language of instruction is always a sensitive issue in the Arab  world for a number of reasons: practical, political and religious, among others.  Arabic is regarding by Muslims as a sacred language, the language in God revealed the Holy Qur’an to the Prophet Muhammad, so for many it has a special status above all others.
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Arabizing curricula is often a way of asserting a unique, independent identity.  That said, though, Arabization is quite controversial in places where there are minority populations that don’t speak Arabic as a native language.
English, on the other hand, is unquestionably the dominant world language at the moment and there is a certain practicality in acquiescing to that.
In terms of practicality, transforming the language of instruction is always difficult and some of the challenges are pointed out in this article.  Are teachers trained in one language capable of teaching a subject in another?  If you are changing a language of instruction, when do you do so?  Will the College student who was taught a subject in one language follow when they are taught in another?
It’s all very interesting.  I’ll be following how it goes.

BBC Report: One Cleric's Legacy of Peace

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Dr Safrez Naeemi, Imam of Jamia Naeemia in Lahore, is a Pakistani cleric and advocate of non-violence who was killed on June 12 by a suicide bomber, very likely because of his outspoken criticism of the Taliban.

Muhammed Raghib Hussein Naeemi, Dr Naeemi’s son, heard about the attack in a phone call while he was driving.
He says he was angry, very angry but he knew immediately what he had to do.
“I realised that I would have to be very calm. So I ordered all of my father’s students not to harm anyone, not to start fires, not to kill anyone.”

The story is the subject of a piece from BBC Radio 4 called “One Cleric’s Legacy of Peace.” In a time when so much mainstream Western media only shows us troublesome images from the Islamic world, it is good to see such stories.
But though right-wing talking heads on in print and in the media may insist that Muslim clerics do not condemn terrorism, Dr. Naeemi and his son are not as unusual as the title of this article would suggest. I have grown so tired of hearing that claim because it is so absurdly and demonstrably false, and yet the people who make it, usually neo-conservative pundits, right wing Christians, and others in that vein, are never challenged. And yet in the days following the attacks of September 11th, 2001 Muslim clerics in places such as Iran, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Morocco and other Muslim countries denounced the attacks, and ordinary people paused to remember the victims (click here for a moving photo essay). According to the Council on American Islamic Relations,
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…those who commit acts of terror, murder and cruelty in the name of Islam are not only destroying innocent lives, but are also betraying the values of the faith they claim to represent. No injustice done to Muslims can ever justify the massacre of innocent people, and no act of terror will ever serve the cause of Islam.

A group called Muslims Against Terrorism has existed since 1998. The Fiqh Council of North America has written that people who commit terrorism in the name of Islam are criminals not martyrs. On this page you can read a sampling of condemnations issued by clerics from around the world. Even senior clerics from the Darul Uloom Deoband in India, a radically conservative institution established in 1857 and often linked in the media to the Taliban, issued a statement calling terrorism illicit and immoral.
The other point I’d repeat, as it is one I and others have made before, is that the media’s use of Madrassa is reckless and irresponsible. The term has become synonymous with conservative Muslim religious schools. In fact madrassa is an Arabic word that has found its way into other languages of the Muslim world as well and it simply means “school.” So if you were reading an Arabic text that spoke of the Harvard Business School or the London School of Economics, the names of those institutions would be translated with the world “Madrassa.” When I taught at the King Fahd School of Translation in Tangier, an institution that provides what is essentially a graduate level degree, I taught at the Madrassa Malik Fahd L’Turjama (apologies for the transcription) or the Ecole Supérieure Roi Fahd de Traduction.
In Rabat, Morocco there is a Spanish elementary school an American elementary school, a French elementary school, and I don’t know what else. All of the signs translate the name using the word Madrassa, just as the Moroccan schools do.
So it is not safe to assume that madrassas train students in radical Islamic theory. In fact, they may not teach them about Islam at all.

Three Bloggers Arrested in Egypt on the Same Day

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Sometimes it’s dangerous to blog in Egypt.

Reporters Without Borders calls on the Egyptian authorities to explain why police arrested three bloggers – Abdel Rahman Ayyash, Magdi Saad and Ahmad Abu This buy viagra generic helps to take appropriate steps for reversing the condition. Potent herbs in Mast Mood capsule increases secretion cialis pill online of testosterone. It is not an aphrodisiac; cute-n-tiny.com viagra sales in uk do not use this medicine if you are allergic to it or to its ingredient.2) You should inform your doctor if you have had any heart problems (e.g., angina, chest pain, heart failure, irregular heart beats or heart attack), have ever had a stroke, low or high blood pressure, a rare inherited eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa, Any kidney problems or any other serious conditions. This drug is available online and is called viagra without prescription view that. Khalil – last week, two of them on their return from a trip abroad. All three were arrested on the same day, 21 July….

via Reporters Sans Frontières.

Meedan | Al-Jazeera bureau chief threatened in…

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Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has issued a statement condemning Yemen’s ‘harassment and denigration’ of Al Jazeera television, including a threatening telephone call to Sanaa bureau chief, Mourad Hashem, earlier this week.
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“The authorities use and abuse defence of national unity to censor media that try to cover events in southern Yemen,” the press freedom organisation said in the release.

via Meedan | Al-Jazeera bureau chief threatened in….

Video Game Sales in the Middle East

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Here is an interesting post analyzing factors that may be impacting the sale of products such as XBox, Wii and PlayStation in the Middle East.

Video games are on the list of the most popular mainstream media, which makes up an important percentage of social activity for a considerable portion of youngsters worldwide. The Middle East region is no exception; video games are as popular in the region as it is anywhere else in the world despite the minimal support/focus of the major hardware players Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft. Their lack of interest in the region – so far – keeps the doors open for piracy to nourish and dominate the regional video games industry. For instance, almost every Nintendo Wii in Saudi Arabia is modified with a special chip to allow the machine to play pirated games that cost 3$ to 8$ in comparison to the original games costing around $80 – $100 in the region – even higher than their prices in many western countries.

Among the factors considered, religious sensitivities, stereotyping, marketing strategies and the impact of piracy. He makes some good points. I would particularly like to see some of the locally produced games.

The offensive portrayal of Arabs in some Western video games has triggered local Arab production companies to come up with their own version of video games to protect their identity and perspective of the state of affairs of the regional conflicts. Afkar Media, a Syrian company, has already produced different games with nationalism streak: Under Ash, a political game that tells the story of the first intifada from the Palestinian perspective. Under Siege, is another political game that tells the story of a Palestinian family and their struggle during the second intifada (1999-2002). Quraish, the first Arabic 3D real strategy game (RTS), tracks the origins of Islam in the desert of Arabic 590 A.C.

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Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics, Culture and Dissent

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The Arabic BlogosphereThe Berkman Center for Internet and Society has released the most recent of its landmark studies mapping the ideology of the global blogosphere with the study Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics, Culture, and Dissent.

This case study is part of a series of studies produced by the Internet & Democracy project. The project’s initial case studies investigated three frequently cited examples of the Internet’s influence on democracy. The first case looked at the user-generated news site OhmyNews and its impact on the 2002 elections in South Korea. The second documented the role of technology in Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. The third analyzed the network composition and content of the Iranian blogosphere. Fall 2008 saw the release of a new series of case studies, which broadened the scope of our research and examined some less well-known parts of the research landscape. In a pair of studies, we reviewed the role of networked technologies in the 2007 civic crises of Burma’s Saffron Revolution and Kenya’s post-election turmoil. In April 2009, Urs Gasser’s three-part case study examined the role of technology in Switzerland’s semi-direct democracy. This case expands on our study of foreign blogospheres with an analysis of the Arabic language blogosphere.

A summary of the report can be found at this link.
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Morocco abounds with entertaining and creative festivals

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This article dates all the way back to September or last year, but I just discovered it again.  It symbolizes a much more important change than it might seem at first because since independence the central government has attempted to impose a homogeneous identity on the people of the nation.
This policy not only failed to recognize minority rights in some abstract sense, but that also ensured that getting an education was more difficult for minority populations, that those who were not educated in Arabic (or French) were always at the mercy of those who were, that public health and other messages never reached a sizable portions of the population, etc.   Surprisingly, as people begin more enfranchised, you see a that there was never any need to force a sense of national unity through language policy and such.  By and large, Moroccans are proud to be Moroccan.
The other take away from this?  There is a lot going on in Morocco, so book a ticket and go.  You won’t regret it.
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Morocco abounds with entertaining and creative festivals.
As the number of festivals grows each year in Morocco, the Ministry of Culture is handing the reins of festival organisation and management over to civil society and regional authorities.

Thanks to simbad 38