The King Salman International Academy for the Arabic Language honored today in Riyadh the winning teams of the first three places in the second edition of the (Arabic Programming) Challenge, which was dedicated to enriching the “Riyadh Dictionary” with innovative applications and new ideas to develop the dictionary system with applications related to the dictionary and retrieve content from it, in a ceremony attended by a large number of personalities and faces of the local and international linguistic and technical community.
“Programming Arabic” is a global technical challenge directed to people with technical and linguistic energies and competencies from all over the world to innovate technical solutions and digital platforms, and provide tools specialized in processing the Arabic language automatically, to enhance its position among the world’s living languages and employ technology in its service.
The Secretary-General of the Academy, Dr. Abdullah bin Saleh Al-Washmi, praised the directives of Prince
Badr bin Abdullah bin Farhan, Minister of Culture and Chairman of the Board of Trustees, and the support and assistance that the Academy finds in its work to promote the use of the Arabic language and launch initiatives supporting it, and to confirm the leading position of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the field of artificial intelligence technologies, and to enhance its tireless efforts in serving the Arabic language regionally and globally.
He said: “The second edition – which we celebrate today by honoring the winning teams – comes after the success of the first session, which witnessed the participation of more than (1000) linguists, technicians and entrepreneurs from (40) countries, and (151) projects to serve the Arabic language”, and the challenge targets specialists and those interested in developing computer technologies for the Arabic language from individuals and institutions, and developing computer technologies and artificial intelligence for the Arabic language, as the second version of (Arabi
c programming) sought: To achieve the objectives of the Human Capacity Development Program – one of the programs to achieve Vision 2030 – and to build relationships with specialists locally and internationally, introduce them, highlight their efforts, raise awareness of the importance of the field of automatic processing of the Arabic language, introduce it, indicate ways to contribute to it, encourage creativity and development, raise the spirit of competition, and stimulate minds to innovate solutions for Arabic language processing and computerization.
He won first place with a prize of (150) thousand Saudi riyals (tree spider web team) from the Russian Federation, for his idea, which expresses a system for automatic enrichment of the content of the “Riyadh Dictionary” using three sources of knowledge: (community of Arabic language experts, artificial intelligence, and dictionaries in the content of the Internet).
While the second place was (Intelligence Pioneers Team), belonging to the Republics of Alger
ia and France, deserving of a financial prize of (100) thousand Saudi riyals, and their project focused on the use of artificial intelligence in enriching the (Riyadh Dictionary) with terms and definitions from specialized fields in a fast and effective manner, with the possibility of creating other specialized dictionaries, such as: (Riyadh Medical Dictionary).The
(Arab Examples Team) won third place with a prize of (50) thousand Saudi riyals, and their idea is to develop an artificial intelligence system that enriches the Riyadh Dictionary with appropriate examples for the meaning of each word in it, and the team members belong to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Arab Republic of Egypt.
The closing ceremony was accompanied by some qualitative activities, including: the exhibition (Arab Intelligence Center), and another exhibition in which the winning teams presented their various ideas and projects to be presented to visitors, including linguists and technicians, and the number of registered in the sec
ond edition of this challenge reached (142) teams, representing (30) countries from all over the world, while the number of participants forming the teams reached (546) participants: 56.6% are female, 43.4% are males.
In a related context, the Academy launched on April 29, 2024 (Arabic Intelligence Center), which is an artificial intelligence center specialized in automatic processing of the Arabic language, providing its services to all those interested in it at the local and international levels, and seeks to achieve a number of pivotal goals related to the field of linguistic computing in the Academy, and includes a set of initiatives, namely: (Swar) platform for digital dictionaries, (Falak) platform for digital blogs, and Riyadh Dictionary of the Contemporary Arabic Language, to which this version of the Arabic programming has been linked, which is the richest dictionary in vocabulary Contemporary, as it contains more than (120) thousand lexical entries, (145) thousand meanings, and (35) thousand synony
ms and antonyms.
It is noteworthy that the King Salman International Academy for the Arabic Language seeks, through its various initiatives, programs, and linguistic projects, to preserve the integrity of the Arabic language and its linguistic identity, support it verbally and in writing, and facilitate its teaching and learning inside and outside the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Source: National news agency – Lebanon