The Scientific Council to Hold its Nineteenth Meeting | | | | | <p><span class="ms-rteFontSize-3"><br></span></p><p><span class="ms-rteFontSize-3">The Scientific Council of the Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic will hold its nineteenth meeting on Tuesday, 31 January and Wednesday, 1 February 2023 in Doha.</span></p><p><span class="ms-rteFontSize-3">The agenda for the first day includes approving the minutes of the 18th meeting's deliberations and presenting the Executive Board's report on the progress of work in the dictionary, which is presented by the Executive Director of the Doha Historical Dictionary of the Arabic Language, Dr Azeddine Bouchikhi.</span></p><p><span class="ms-rteFontSize-3">Over the course of two days, the Council will discuss the submitted reports and important scientific and methodological issues, such as new proposals related to compound terms, daily life vocabulary between colloquial and MSA, and borrowed words. The Council will also discuss the bibliography for the twentieth century and other recommendations.<br></span></p><p><br></p> | The Scientific Council of the Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic will hold its nineteenth meeting on Tuesday, 31 January and Wednesday, 1 February 2023 in Doha. | | 1/17/2023 9:00:00 PM | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
16th Meeting Of The Scientific Council | | | | | <p><span class="ms-rteFontFace-1 ms-rteFontSize-3">The Scientific Council of the Doha Historical Dictionary of the Arabic Language held its sixteenth meeting remotely using Webex technology, on Sunday, June 27, 2021.<br>The agenda included the ratification of the minutes of the 15th meeting, the presentation of the Executive board's report on the progress of work in the Dictionary and the achievements made; reports on the first and second parts of the open Bibliography, and the progress of work in approving the edited dictionary entries.</span></p><p><span class="ms-rteFontFace-1 ms-rteFontSize-3">The Scientific Council discussed the submitted reports, and issued its decisions and recommendations on the presented issues.</span></p><p><br></p> | The Scientific Council of the Doha Historical Dictionary of the Arabic Language held its sixteenth meeting remotely using Webex technology, on Sunday, June 27, 2021. The agenda included the ratification of the minutes of the 15th meeting, the presentation | | 6/28/2021 9:00:00 PM | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
15th Meeting Of The Scientific Council | | | | | <div><span class="ms-rteFontSize-3">The Scientific Council of the Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic will hold its fifteenth meeting remotely using Webex technology, on December 28, 2020.</span></div><div><span class="ms-rteFontSize-3">The agenda includes the ratification of the minutes of the 14th meeting, the presentation of the Executive board’s report on the progress of work in the Dictionary and the achievements made; a report on the first part of the Open Bibliography, the report of the Sources Committee, and a report on the progress of work in approving the edited entries of the Dictionary.</span></div><div><span class="ms-rteFontSize-3">The Scientific Council will discuss the criteria for selecting sources for the Open Bibliography, and prospects for working in the dictionary.</span></div><div><br><br></div><p><br></p> | The Scientific Council of the Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic will hold its fifteenth meeting remotely using Webex technology, on December 28, 2020. | | 12/19/2020 9:00:00 PM | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
14th Meeting Of The Scientific Council | | | | | <p><span style="font-family:calibri;font-size:17.3333px;background-color:#ffffff;"></span></p><p><span class="ms-rteFontSize-3">The Scientific Council of the Doha Historical Dictionary of the Arabic Language will hold its 14th meeting in Doha, on 9 and 10 December 2019. </span></p><p><span class="ms-rteFontSize-3">The agenda includes the ratification of the minutes of the 13th meeting, and the presentation of the Executive Board reports: a first report presenting the progress of work in the dictionary and the achievements made; a second report discussing the training course and applied workshops lastly conducted for lexicography editing in the second stage of the dictionary; and a last report stating the vision of the Executive Board to prepare the bibliography of the third stage and beyond.</span></p><p><span class="ms-rteFontSize-3">The Scientific Council will focus, in the first day, on developing criteria for selecting sources for the bibliography of the third stage and beyond, and on studying mechanisms for the approval of the dictionary materials (lexical entries) in its second stage. On the second day, the members of the Scientific Council will participate in practical workshops on how to adopt the lexical materials edited in the computing platform prepared for this purpose, after these materials were made available to them in advance.</span><br></p> | The Scientific Council of the Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic will hold its 14th meeting from 9-10 September 2019, in Doha. | | 12/7/2019 9:00:00 PM | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
13th Meeting Of The Scientific Council | | | | | <p><span class="ms-rteFontFace-5 ms-rteFontSize-3"><br></span></p><p><span class="ms-rteFontFace-5 ms-rteFontSize-3">The Scientific Council of the Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic will hold its 13<sup>th</sup> meeting from 28-29 April 2019, in Doha.</span></p><p><span class="ms-rteFontFace-5 ms-rteFontSize-3">The agenda includes the ratification of the minutes of the twelfth meeting, the presentation of the Executive Board's report on the progress of the work on the Dictionary and the achievements obtained, as well as a report on the bibliography of the second phase.</span></p><p><span class="ms-rteFontFace-5 ms-rteFontSize-3">The Scientific Council will evaluate the first phase of the Dictionary and discuss the plan of the second phase, and how to prepare the bibliography of the third stage; in addition to the study of some new scientific issues.</span></p> | The Scientific Council of the Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic will hold its 13th meeting from 28-29 April 2019, in Doha. | | 4/21/2019 9:00:00 PM | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
The Launch of the Doha Historical Dictionary Web Portal | | | | | <div style="color:#333333;font-family:bahijthesansarabic-plain;background-color:#ffffff;"><span class="ms-rteFontSize-4">His Highness Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Emir of the State of Qatar on Monday launched the </span><a href="https://www.dohadictionary.org/#/" target="_blank" style="background-color:transparent;transition:all 0.15s ease-out 0s;"><span class="ms-rteForeColor-3 ms-rteFontSize-4" style="">web portal</span></a><span class="ms-rteFontSize-4"> for the Doha Historical Dictionary for the Arabic Language. The ceremony represented a pivotal moment in the history of Arab culture, organized by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, and attended by academics and linguists from around the world. The ceremony opened with a recitation of verses from the Holy Quran, followed by a video devoted to the Doha Historical Dictionary. Dr. Ali al-Kubaisi, who sits on the Academic Council of the Dictionary, during the opening speech, assured that Doha’s sponsorship of the historic dictionary represents the Arab people and Qatar's enthusiasm to enhance an Arab identity by advancing its language, which is the embodiment of its existence. He stressed that the Doha Dictionary is a qualitative leap in the service of the Arabic language, the first successful Arab attempt to historicize their language.</span></div><h1 style="margin-top:30px;margin-bottom:10px;font-weight:700;font-family:bahijthesansarabic-plain;text-transform:none;background-color:#ffffff;"><span class="ms-rteThemeForeColor-6-5 ms-rteFontSize-4">Azmi Bishara: The Doha Historical Dictionary is Doha’s Gift to the Whole Arab Community</span></h1><div style="color:#333333;font-family:bahijthesansarabic-plain;background-color:#ffffff;"><span class="ms-rteFontSize-4">Dr. Azmi Bishara, general director of the ACRPS and the Doha Historical Dictionary, assured in his speech that this project and its historic launch would not have been possible without vision and faith in joint Arab action, Arab competencies and strong management. It was successful because of the cooperation between scholars, the executive board and computer experts, after other initiatives to develop a historical Arabic dictionary were abandoned. Bishara noted the achievements of previous projects, beginning with the establishment of the Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo in 1932, and the contribution of the German orientalist August Fischer (1865-1949), who sought to record the development of the Arabic language until the year 300 AH. Other attempts were made, including the work of Sheikh Abdullah al-Alayli in Lebanon, and attempts to start collecting evidence in the Tunisian project of the Arab Historical Dictionary, which succeeded in collecting the evidence of 90 Jahili poets from 200 to 609 AD, and the attempt to unite the Arab linguistic and scholarly communities through symposia and selecting primary and secondary sources of the corpus. </span></div><div style="color:#333333;font-family:bahijthesansarabic-plain;background-color:#ffffff;"><br class="ms-rteFontSize-4"></div><div style="color:#333333;font-family:bahijthesansarabic-plain;background-color:#ffffff;"><span class="ms-rteFontSize-4">Certainly, these efforts are appreciated. However, these efforts, along with their achievements, never led to the publication of a historical lexicon of the Arabic language until the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies was patronized and launched in 2012 by His Highness Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, then Crown Prince, who has supported the project from the outset. Bishara went on to say "We do not have the idea then, but we are the ones who have the courage to build this boat and sail it in the vast ocean of Arabic language history. We have demonstrated with the academic approach, management skills and institutionalized teamwork, in the academic Council, the executive board and the lexicological teams, that it is possible to implement this project.” He went on to say that vision and determination and the generous and understanding care provided by the visionary Qatari leadership helped the project overcome a bumpy road dotted with complications and initial ignorance. </span></div><div style="color:#333333;font-family:bahijthesansarabic-plain;background-color:#ffffff;"><br class="ms-rteFontSize-4"></div><div style="color:#333333;font-family:bahijthesansarabic-plain;background-color:#ffffff;"><span class="ms-rteFontSize-4">Bishara stressed that the achievements of the historic Doha Dictionary of Arabic in five years since its inception is a huge achievement and unique at both the Arab and international level. The first two years were devoted to developing the foundations and methodology and the computerized database preparation. In the following three years, a hundred thousand dictionary entries were completed covering the seven hundred years before the year 200 AH (800 CE), despite the special difficulties that characterize Arabia. The difficulties in the case of the Arabic language surpass any other language with a historical lexicon. In this regard, Bishara referred to the experiences of historical dictionaries in other languages which took decades and even centuries to produce. He made clear that the historical dictionaries are linked in all languages to renaissance and enlightenment, because the language is the basis for the revival of any nation. He concluded by saying the Arab Center decided to call it the 'Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic' because the project is also a precious gift from Doha to the Arab people as a whole. Qatar demonstrates that a country with a visionary leadership and freedom of will and awareness of its people and resources can be a pillar of an Arab renaissance.</span></div><div style="color:#333333;font-family:bahijthesansarabic-plain;background-color:#ffffff;"><br class="ms-rteFontSize-4"></div><div style="color:#333333;font-family:bahijthesansarabic-plain;background-color:#ffffff;"><span class="ms-rteFontSize-4">The executive director of the dictionary, Azeddine Bouchikhi said in his speech that the Arab people, through a historical lexicon, have become capable of combining their literary, religious, scientific and cultural heritage, which is expressed in the texts as a whole. Bouchikhi mentioned that the historical dictionary, which was unique in its production of 100 000 entries in chronological order from the oldest inscription or text until the year 200 AH. He pointed out that the Doha Historical Dictionary, in its first phase, is a foundation that remains open to the participation of scholars and researchers to propose correction, modification and enrichment. Dr. Ramzi Baalbaki, Chair of the academic council of the Doha Historical Dictionary, stressed in his speech that the dictionary's attention to the harmony between the heritage of knowledge and modern human knowledge following the linguistic revolution was a pioneering move. He thanked the State of Qatar and its sponsors for patronizing this historic project and praised Azmi Bishara's enthusiasm and sincere efforts to support it.</span></div><div style="color:#333333;font-family:bahijthesansarabic-plain;background-color:#ffffff;"><br class="ms-rteFontSize-4"></div><div style="color:#333333;font-family:bahijthesansarabic-plain;background-color:#ffffff;"><span class="ms-rteFontSize-4">During the ceremony, the audience listened to a poem by Di Ould Adeba entitled "The Dictionary of Doha, Dream of the Arabs" and a poem entitled "The Dictionary of the Nation" by Hussain Alzeraee. The poets are both linguistic experts in Doha's historic lexicon. Werner Arnold, Professor of Semitic studies at the Institute of Language and Culture of the Near East of the University of Heidelberg and Lutz Edzard, Professor of Arabic and Semitic Languages at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg both provided testimonies in which they commended the work of the Doha Historical Dictionary and its standards of achievement. </span></div><div style="color:#333333;font-family:bahijthesansarabic-plain;background-color:#ffffff;"><br class="ms-rteFontSize-4"></div><span class="ms-rteFontSize-4" style="color:#333333;font-family:bahijthesansarabic-plain;background-color:#ffffff;">Rounding off the ceremony, His Highness Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani, the Emir of the State of Qatar, launched the web portal of the Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic Language. He then presented a video tour of the </span><a href="https://www.dohadictionary.org/#" target="_blank" style="color:#cc9b00;transition:all 0.15s ease-out 0s;font-family:bahijthesansarabic-plain;"><span class="ms-rteFontSize-4"><span class="ms-rteForeColor-3 ms-rteFontSize-4" style="">Doha Historical Dictionary portal</span>.</span></a><div><br></div> | His Highness Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Emir of the State of Qatar on Monday launched the web portal for the Doha Historical Dictionary for the Arabic Language. The ceremony represented a pivotal moment in the history of Arab culture, | | 12/9/2018 9:00:00 PM | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Web Portal Ceremony | | | | | <p><span class="ms-rteFontSize-4">Under the patronage of His Highness the Emir of the State of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the web portal of the Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic will be launched on Monday, December 10, 2018. The ceremony launching the dictionary will be followed by an academic conference entitled: "Historical Dictionaries of Languages: Comparisons and Approaches", in which research on the experience of historical lexicons of world languages such as English, German and French will be presented. </span></p><p><span class="ms-rteFontSize-4">The web portal of the dictionary will be publicly available on the following link: </span><a href="https://www.dohadictionary.org/"><span class="ms-rteFontSize-4">https://www.dohadictionary.org</span></a></p> | Under the patronage of His Highness the Emir of the State of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the web portal of the Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic will be launched on Monday, December 10, 2018. | | 12/9/2018 9:00:00 PM | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
12th Meeting of The Scientific Council | | | | | <p><span class="ms-rteFontSize-3">The Scientific Council of the Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic will hold its 12<sup>th</sup> meeting this Wednesday, 12 December 2018, at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Doha, Qatar.</span></p><p><span class="ms-rteFontSize-3">This meeting coincides with the launching of the newly developed dictionary's portal, and a conference devoted to the theme: "Historical Dictionaries of Languages, Comparisons and Approaches".</span></p><p><span class="ms-rteFontSize-3">The Scientific Council will examine bibliography of the second phase of the Dictionary, the future work plan, as well as the fixed items on its agenda.</span></p> | The Scientific Council of the Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic will hold its 12th meeting this Wednesday, 12 December 2018, at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Doha, Qatar. | | 12/6/2018 9:00:00 PM | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies Prepares to Launch the Electronic Portal for the Doha Historical Dictionary of the Arabic Language | | | | | <p style="color:#333333;font-family:bahijthesansarabic-plain;background-color:#ffffff;"><span class="ms-rteFontSize-4">The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Qatar is preparing to launch the web portal of the Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic at a grand ceremony to take place on December 10, 2018 in Doha, capital of the State of Qatar.</span></p><p style="color:#333333;font-family:bahijthesansarabic-plain;background-color:#ffffff;"><span class="ms-rteFontSize-4">Scholars and Arabic language experts view this event as a milestone in the history of Arabic – and possibly world – lexicons, given the venerable etymological history of Arabic and the inherent difficulty of preparing an accurately dated and sourced historical glossary for its words and expressions. Of many previous attempts to do this, the Doha Historical Dictionary of the Arabic Language is the first to succeed. This dictionary is unique in chronologically tracking words and terms in Arabic from their earliest occurrence in inscriptions and texts, methodically monitoring transformations in structures and syntax within defined textual contexts, throughout the sustained course of the language’s development. Given the history of the Arabic language and the magnitude of its corpus, work on the dictionary is advancing in stages, with the first phase stretching from the oldest documented Arabic text to 200 A.H., comprising some 100,000 lexical entries, presenting through an advanced web portal an unprecedented range of linguistic, lexical and statistical services.</span></p><p style="color:#333333;font-family:bahijthesansarabic-plain;background-color:#ffffff;"><span class="ms-rteFontSize-4">Taking part in the construction of the lexicon are some three hundred university professors, linguists and scholars in Arab countries, including Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Tunisia, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Qatar, Kuwait, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, Mauritania and Yemen, drawing upon the largest Arabic language corpus compiled to date, rather than any existing dictionary. Members of the lexical teams took in training courses and workshops held in Jordan, Tunisia, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Morocco, Mauritania, Yemen and Turkey. As a result, the lexicon’s scholars have been able to systematize project methodology under a standard guide for processing and editing developed by the executive body of the dictionary, incorporating technical fluency in the use of the lexical processing platform.</span></p><p style="color:#333333;font-family:bahijthesansarabic-plain;background-color:#ffffff;"><span class="ms-rteFontSize-4">The launch date of the Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic coincides with the convening of the 12th meeting of the Scientific Council, an elite of leading Arab scholars. During their past meetings, they studied topics such as the selection of textual sources of the lexicon, comparison of their varied editions and histories, and arriving at scientific conclusions to form a methodological basis for the construction of the lexicon. At its next meeting, the Council will examine procedures to begin the construction of the next phase of the lexicon, extending to the year 500 A.H., and then subsequently to the present time.</span></p><p style="color:#333333;font-family:bahijthesansarabic-plain;background-color:#ffffff;"><span class="ms-rteFontSize-4">The ceremony launching the dictionary will be followed by an academic conference entitled: "Historical Dictionaries of Languages: Comparisons and Approaches", in which research on the experience of historical lexicons of world languages such as English, German and French will be presented. Leading scholars of Western and Arabic lexicons will provide a context for comparison of the historical lexicon of the Arabic language with world lexicons.</span></p><p style="color:#333333;font-family:bahijthesansarabic-plain;background-color:#ffffff;"><span class="ms-rteFontSize-4">The Arab Center launched the project of building a historical dictionary for the Arabic language on May 25, 2013, receiving the generous support of His Highness the Emir of the State of Qatar. Since then, work has been under way in a number of areas at various levels. One of the most important strategic outcomes has been the establishment of the scientific, methodological and technical foundations of the lexicon, paving the way for scholars and experts to construct the first historical dictionary of the Arabic language, opening new and promising horizons for producing an advanced Arabic dictionary.</span></p><p><br class="ms-rteFontSize-4"></p> | The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Qatar is preparing to launch the web portal of the Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic at a grand ceremony to take place on December 10, 2018 in Doha, capital of the State of Qatar. | | 10/9/2018 9:00:00 PM | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
9th meeting of the Scientific Council | | | | | <p>The Scientific Council of the Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic will hold its 9<sup>th</sup> meeting under the chairmanship of Dr. Ramzi Baalbaki at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Doha, between 10 and 11 May 2017.</p><p>The agenda includes the ratification of the minutes of the 8<sup>th</sup> meeting and the report of the Executive Board to be presented by Dr. Aze-Eddine Bouchikhi, Executive Director of the Dictionary. Next, the Council moves to adopt the lexical entries that have been completed, to consider terms according to the rules and guidelines of terminology processing, to discuss the issue of date in the dictionary, in addition to some detailed scientific issues. The Council will also be briefed on the draft introduction of the Dictionary.</p> | The Scientific Council of the Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic will hold its 9th meeting under the chairmanship of Dr. Ramzi Baalbaki at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Doha, between 10 and 11 May 2017. | | 5/6/2017 9:00:00 PM | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
8th Meeting Of The Scientific Council | | | | | <p></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 11px;text-align:justify;"><strong><span style="margin:0px;line-height:105%;font-family:"sakkal majalla";font-size:16pt;"><strong><font color="#000000">The Scientific Council of the
Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic will hold its eighth meeting under the
chairmanship of Dr. Ramzi Baalbaki in the Ritz Carlton Hotel at Doha between 7
and 8 of December 2016</font></strong><span lang="AR-SA" dir="RTL" style="margin:0px;"><strong><font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman" size="5">.</font></strong></span></span></strong></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 11px;text-align:justify;"><strong><span style="margin:0px;line-height:105%;font-family:"sakkal majalla";font-size:16pt;"><strong><font color="#000000">The agenda includes ratification
of the seventh meeting minutes and the report provided by the dictionary executive
body, to be presented by its executive director Dr. Aze-Eddine Bouchikhi, in
which the complete production line - from first preparations to last stages “editing
and publishing” - followed for elaborating the lexical entries will be
detailed; the report will also present, through a temporary publication
website, the first batch of the dictionary entries which is composed of more
than five thousand terms.</font></strong></span></strong></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 11px;text-align:justify;"><strong><span style="margin:0px;line-height:105%;font-family:"sakkal majalla";font-size:16pt;"><strong><font color="#000000">The council will next look for and
discuss mechanisms for validating and approving the lexical entries completed
till now, preparation of the dictionary introduction; the relationship between
lexical processing and terminology treatment </font></strong><span style="margin:0px;"><font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman" size="5"><strong> </strong></font></span><strong><font color="#000000">as well as other scientific issues will also
discussed with a careful consideration.</font></strong></span></strong></p> | The Scientific Council of the Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic will hold its eighth meeting under the chairmanship of Dr. Ramzi Baalbaki in the Ritz Carlton Hotel at Doha between 7 and 8 of December 2016 | | 12/5/2016 9:00:00 PM | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
A Report on the Training Workshop for Lexical Processing Coordinators in Arab Countries | <img alt="" src="/PublishingImages/BoradMember/_DSC5954.JPG?RenditionID=5" width="700" style="BORDER:0px solid;" /> | | | | <p></p><p style="text-align:center;">A Report on the Training Workshop for Lexical Processing Coordinators in Arab Countries</p><p> </p><p>The executive board of the Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic has held a workshop from May 2<sup>nd</sup> to May 9<sup>th</sup>, 2015 in Doha-Qatar over seven workdays for training the external office coordinators of the project in some Arab countries. Each coordinator is to supervise a team of linguists working on the lexical processing of the material belonging to some assigned Arabic roots, and then send it to the central team in Doha where such material gets revised and edited in its pre-final format that in turn gets considered by the Scientific Council of the project for approval.</p><p> </p><p>This workshop can be regarded as the start of the first phase of gradual expansion in lexical processing which is the core of the project. The executive manager Dr. Aze-Eddine Bouchikhi gave the opening speech that started with a welcome to all the attendees, and then defined the Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic as a dictionary that records the whole Arabic vocabulary since the oldest documented Arabic text to our time, and also traces the structural and semantic evolvement of each term on the timeline with each of the senses it has taken corroborated by an authentic citation. He then explained its overall plan, its administrative structure, and the quality of its core staff comprised of linguistic and computational experts. Dr. Bouchikhi also mentioned the many challenges of this project esp. its enormity, and expressed the commitment to attracting the high calibers from all the Arab countries in order to stand up to these qualitative, quantitative, and technical challenges. He then notified the coordinators that the expansion of lexical processing efficiently and accurately depends among several factors upon their capacity to understanding the process of lexical processing in depth via its software platform. His speech concluded by praising the continuous support of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS) to this project.</p><p> </p><p>The opening session has been followed by a presentation given by the deputy executive manager Dr. Mohamed Al-Obaidi on the Standard Guide to Lexical Processing which is the document stating the most important concepts, determinants, and constraints that each lexical analyst has to adhere to, and also the pitfalls he has to avoid. Upon the conclusion of his presentation he explained that future editions of this guide may respond to the progress of the project.</p><p> </p><p>Mohamed Reqqas, a software engineer of the staff, then made a presentation on the lexical processing platform <em>Doha Lex</em><em><sup>®</sup></em> of the project. He showed the various basic functions this platform provides, and related them to the workflow of the lexical analysts as well as the coordinators. The presentation reflected the richness and sophistication of this platform's functionality, as well as the high interactivity with its users. "This platform has been designed and implemented within this project to respond to the computational needs of building the Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic. It will be evolving with the progress of the project and the expansion of its activities." He proclaimed.</p><p> </p><p>The first day of the workshop concluded with an open discussion among all the attendees towards a deeper common understanding of the material presented over the day.</p><p> </p><p>The second day of the workshop started with a presentation given by the computer science expert Dr. Mohamed Bebah who introduced the technical part of the Standard Guide to Lexical Processing. He focused on the steps of lexical processing via <em>Doha Lex</em><em><sup>®</sup></em>, and explained the functions and services it affords to lexical analysts.</p><p> </p><p>Sample videos capturing the working of lexical analysts on Doha Lex® during the different phases of the process have then been run for more visual explanation. The second day of the workshop has then been concluded by an open discussion among all the attendees on the material presented over the first two days of the workshop.</p><p> </p><p>The third day schedule included two main sessions presenting two applied case studies of lexical processing; the first given by the Arabic linguistics expert Dr. Mohamed Al-Khateeb who introduced in depth the processing of the root (د ب ر) regarding the challenges of inferring the proper meanings to its given lemmas in their contexts, defining these meanings, and corroborating the citations … etc. He also detailed clearly his criteria to practically handle such challenges. The second session was given by the Arabic linguistics expert Dr. Abdul Raheem Rahmouny who introduced the criteria of his lexical processing of the sample root (ع ه د), and explained how he handled the aforementioned difficulties providing some useful proposals in this regard.</p><p> </p><p>The open discussion session at the end of the third day showed a better understanding of the coordinators of the various aspects of the lexical semantic processing. Upon the conclusion of this session Dr. Bouchikhi explained how the rest of the training workshop will proceeds; esp. the on-site training and the assignment of trainers from the central project team to trainees from the external office coordinators.</p><p> </p><p>The fourth, the fifth, and the sixth days have all been devoted to practicing the work on <em>Doha Lex</em><em><sup>®</sup></em> where each linguistics expert of the central team worked hand-in-hand with one or two coordinators. Each coordinator has then acquired a total down-to-earth experience with lexical processing of 14 hours.</p><p> </p><p>After the weekend on Friday, the last day of the workshop started with a session of Dr. Mohamed Al-Obaidi who interactively explained the roles and tasks of the external office coordinators in different Arab countries regarding the management of lexical analysts in their countries, the determinants of continuously following them up, the technically supervising them, and linking them to the central team in Doha-Qatar for computational and linguistic support.</p><p> </p><p>During the last session of the workshop, Dr. Bouchikhi thanked the attendees over the seven days of the training, and expressed the readiness of his central team to immediately respond to the work of coordinators in various countries whom he asked to select qualified linguists as soon as possible. "Once you do, we will hold a training workshop for your linguists in each country in order to make sure of the correct understanding, and the fine quality of their prospected output." He added.</p><p> </p><p>Finally, the coordinators were asked to fill a questionnaire in order to get their opinions and remarks on this crush workshop as well as their proposals for the future of this work. The executive board manager has then delivered a participation certificate to each attendee. </p><p></p> | A Report on the Training Workshop for Lexical Processing Coordinators in Arab Countries | | 5/14/2015 9:00:00 PM | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Workshop on “Information Technologies for the Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic” | | | | | <p>The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS) has held a workshop on "Information Technologies for the Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic" on Sat. and Sun. 21-22 September, 2013 in the hotel Ritz-Carlton – Doha within the activities of the Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic project.</p><p>The workshop reviewed the best of software regarding building and structuring text corpora, Arabic text processing, dictionary writing systems, and e-publishing. An elite of the prominent Arabic NLP experts participated in the workshop, where they presented practical examples in three areas:</p><p>- The first is concerned with the automatic text corpus of the historical dictionary regarding its building criteria, and its processing tools and their deployment for extracting the lexical material. The Arabic OCR systems have also been reviewed to see how effective they are at text digitization for the historical dictionary of Arabic.</p><p>- The second focused on the automatic processing of the text corpus, and dictionary editing, where the researchers discussed and compared the different tools for text annotation, indexing, morphological analysis, morphological disambiguation, concordancing, and semantic analysis, in order to know about their effectiveness, availability, and the prospects of their developments to match the needs of the historical dictionary of Arabic project. Dictionary writing systems (DWS) have also been discussed within this area in order to check how effective they are at editing the dictionary of our project.</p><p>- The third area has been concerned with the dictionary e-publishing whose core with the design of the dictionary e-portal, where some similar cases have been reviewed for evaluating how useful they are for serving in the historical dictionary of Arabic.</p><p style="text-align:justify;"><br></p> | The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies holds a workshop on "Computer Technologies for the Historical Dictionary of Arabic Language" ... | | 9/20/2013 9:00:00 PM | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
ACRPS Launches the Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic Project | | | | | <p> </p><p>The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS) announced yesterday Sat. May 25<sup>th</sup>, 2013 in the Ritz-Carlton hotel – Doha the official launching of the "Doha Historical Dictionary of Project" that came after a series of preparatory meetings and scientific gatherings incorporating an elite of linguistic, lexicographic, and computational experts from all around the Arab world over about two years. This launching came through the first meeting of the dictionary's Scientific Council headed by Dr. Azmi Bishara the general director of ACRPS. Later in the meeting, Dr. Beshara passed the council's lead to Dr. Ramzy Baalbaky in the presence of the council members.</p><p>This civilization project is to fill a big gap in the history of Arabic language, and to enable the Arab nation with its successive generations to understand their language, as well as their intellectual and scientific heritage. The project is also prospected to link the past of this nation to its presence, and contribute in elevating the Arab nation from its current status of degradation and dependency towards a more promising future. The project has been adopted by his highness Shiek Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani the crown prince of Qatar who generously affords the auspices and funding of this project.</p><p>Building this long awaited historical dictionary that chronicles the Arabic vocabulary over twenty centuries will take about 15 years on multiple phases whose accomplishments are presented each three years. On top of the multitude of big goals targeted by this dictionary come the enabling of researchers to make research evaluating our intellectual and scientific heritage in light of the new findings of this dictionaries, and the investment of the dictionary's comprehensive digital text corpus in developing a number of Arabic NLP tools such as MT, dictation machines, syntax checkers, as well as morphological, syntax and semantic analyzers. The project will afford a number of subsidiary dictionaries that are badly needed for the Arabic library such as a dictionary of the Terms of Civilization, Scientific Terminology dictionaries, a Comprehensive Dictionary of Modern Arabic, and Tutorial Dictionaries. </p><p>Dr. Beshara in his speech on this event emphasized the importance of the Historical Dictionary project as a dream of generations of Arab experts, linguists, and even orientalists. He mentioned the achievements made so far during the preparatory stage of the dictionary, assuming this moment as a superbly historical one, and that the project is a one for all Arabs not a one of a single state. He also considered the Historical Dictionary of Arabic as a renaissance project based on the Arabic language; i.e. such a dictionary will enable the language to evolve with a smooth continuation of its history, and with a firm understanding of the Arabic vocabulary and its semantics. "It is a shame on a nation with such a historical and civilization extension to still be lacking for a historical dictionary", he stated. He then added that "With the start usually makes for half of the work, the accomplishment of the rest of this project is a due with the opportunity of this distinct presence of scientists and experts from all around the Arab states. Each of these scientists participates in the project as an Arab not as a national representative of his country."</p><p>Dr. Baalbaky mentioned the serious beginnings of the project along with the accomplishments realized so far that both promise a great yield of this work. He also summarized the factors that paved the way towards these accomplishments into three elements:</p><p>- The first is Dr. Azmi Bishara; the vigorous figure backing and leading the project persistently and confidently.</p><p>- The second is the team behind the idea whose members are undertaking the technical and executive management of the project.</p><p>- The third is the elite of Arab scientists and experts selected carefully for their scientific capacity and field expertise. </p><p> Dr. Baalbaky also mentioned that funding is the lifeline for carrying out this project, "The state of Qatar – represented by the crown prince; his highness Shiek Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani - has granted the sponsorship of this project as part of support the Arabic identity and reinforcing the spirit of the belonging to the Arab nation.", he added.</p><p>Dr. Azeddine Bouchikhi, the executive manager of the project, presented in his speech a definition of the Historical Dictionary of Arabic, and explained its importance, its feasibility, and its implementation phases. He also noted that building a Historical Dictionary of Arabic is building the nation's linguistic memory, and building the linguistic memory is the same as building the intellectual memory.</p><p>Chronologically documenting this memory makes the linguistic and intellectual developments the Arab nation went through over about twenty centuries easy to observe and recognize. This will in turn allow us to understand our intellectual and scientific heritage through the actual senses of its vocabulary and the concepts of its terminology, "We will really know ourselves after building this dictionary", he added. Dr. Bouchikhi concluded his speech thanking those figures with elan and determination esp. Dr. Azmi Bishara who will be mentioned in history with honor for backing this dictionary. He also praised the sponsorship of the crown prince of Qatar his highness Shiek Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, assuming the dictionary name "Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic" a gesture of gratitude for this generous sponsorship of the project.</p><p>Upon this celebration, the temporary web page of the dictionary has been unleashed on web site of ACRPS at the link <a href="http://www.dohainstitute.org/dohadictionary">http://www.dohainstitute.org/dohadictionary</a>. </p><p>Next, the scientific council went on discussing the work plan, and the project structure set by the experts and the executive team.</p><p style="text-align:justify;"><br></p> | Launching the project of Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic | | 5/24/2013 9:00:00 PM | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |