Participating in GITEX Global 2024, the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre (ALC) is showcasing a number of flagship projects at its pavilion, reflecting its commitment to keeping pace with technological advancements, in line with its strategy to enhance the presence of the Arabic language and support the publishing sector.
The Centre took the opportunity of participating at the world’s largest technology exhibition to showcase three of its leading digital projects: the Digital Lexicon "Daleel Alma'ani", the AI-Powered Audiobooks platform, and the Poetic Intelligence Lab.
The ALC platform at GITEX offers visitors a glimpse of the latest updates of the Digital Lexicon "Daleel Alma'ani" project, the first comprehensive Arabic-English digital dictionary to use audio and visual elements to enrich its content, featuring more than 7,000 lexical items that represent about 80% of the most commonly used words in modern Arabic. Produced by a team of expert lexicographers at the ALC, working closely with a specialist technical team, the Digital Lexicon "Daleel Alma'ani" uses Arabic language computing technologies, artificial intelligence, database technologies, and search engines.
Designed to meet the needs of students and non-native speakers of Arabic, the Digital Lexicon "Daleel Alma'ani" dictionary provides reliable and contemporary vocabulary. Each entry contains the various meanings of a given word, elegantly arranged, along with their corresponding English equivalent. Each meaning is also defined, illustrated with examples, and includes information about its linguistic level and grammatical case, supported by an illustrative image that explains its synonyms and antonyms. Furthermore, the platform includes also an automated pronunciation feature for definitions and examples, such as common expressions, inflections, and derivatives.
The Digital Lexicon "Daleel Alma'ani" dictionary uses Arabic language computing technologies and AI to convert written text into spoken language, enabling users to hear the correct pronunciation of words, learn their definitions, and explore examples of their use. It also provides users who speak other languages with equivalent words in English, in order to help them learn Arabic. The platform also provides clear and simple definitions of the words it contains, filling a gap in Arabic dictionaries, which often lack definitions.
The Digital Lexicon "Daleel Alma'ani" dictionary website and smart application feature a simple and user-friendly interface, designed with flexibility in mind, allowing users to add new words or components to existing words. A team of linguists from the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre continuously reviews and improves the dictionary, which has been developed in stages since mid-2024.
Visitors to the ALC pavilion can also explore a wide range of audiobooks available through the AI-Powered Audiobooks platform, which represents the Centre’s first step towards incorporating artificial intelligence into publishing and book production, in line with the UAE government’s vision to invest in AI.
The project uses artificial intelligence to convert written texts into high-quality audio content and reproduces a selection of the ALC’s publications using AI technologies, which makes it easier for readers, researchers, students, and People of Determination to access notable literary and knowledge publications. The project has so far worked on 10 titles from the Emirati Treasures series, showcasing the most prominent Emirati books published in recent years.
The project also draws on a large collection of audio recordings previously produced at the ALC, using natural human voices narrating various texts, which are then paired with their written versions. The project also looks at how words are pronounced in different contexts and how sentence structure affects the overall tone of the voice.
Another project on display at the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre pavilion at GITEX Global 2024 is the pioneering Poetic Intelligence Lab project, which aims to present poetry content in a more modern and interesting format to help Arabic language learners and teachers to explore the poetic arts. It also supports young poets and enables them to refine their poems and ensure their linguistic and prosodic accuracy using AI technologies. Moreover, the project has developed smart tools to allow publishers to improve vowelisation of poems, as well as advanced software to enhance the promotion of rich poetic content.
The project marks a new phase for the Poetry Encyclopaedia; it relies on modern technology and artificial intelligence, taking advantage of the digital transformation campaign the UAE is spearheading in order to promote the Encyclopaedia’s library, highlight its features, and optimise it for search engines. The project also leverages the UAE’s significant technological advancements to strengthen the role of Arabic as a language of identity, civilisation, science, and arts, making it more accessible to younger generations through tools and methods tailored to their time.
The Poetry Encyclopaedia serves as a primary reference for students and researchers in the field of Arabic literature, enabling them to study and compare different poetic periods. It encourages renewal by enriching the Arabic language, collecting and organising poetic works in innovative ways, and providing a launch pad for new creations. Moreover, the Encyclopaedia supports scholarly research on Arabic poetry, contributing towards refining digital Arabic content related to poetry, addressing various issues related to language and consistency of references - an essential contribution in an era where digital content has become the primary resource for researchers and readers.
The initiative is the fruit of the concerted efforts by a prominent group of poets and scholars for over a quarter of a century. Its significance lies primarily in its role as a vessel documenting Arabic poetry through the ages, which helps ensure that it is never lost or forgotten, especially in light of the rapid technological changes taking place, while also allowing for easy access to poetic works from anywhere and at any time.
The Poetry Encyclopaedia’s website is divided into sections according to subject matter, with the aim of providing visitors with an exceptional cultural experience that allows them to familiarise themselves with Arab poets and their works throughout various historical periods. The content includes poems and biographies of poets, covering ancient eras, particularly the pre-Islamic and the early Islamic periods. In addition, the library houses 612 full books and 53 summaries, along with audiobooks such as Arabic Poetry’s Finest Selection, The Best of Prose, and Book Summaries. It also includes a section for audio poems and a dictionary section with a search mechanism for several major lexicons.
The Poetry Encyclopaedia, managed by the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre, has consolidated its position as a leading cultural platform for Arabic poetry and a key resource for those interested in this literary art and its treasures. It has undergone significant stages of development, starting as a CD-ROM, then evolving into a website, followed by a mobile application. Currently, the Encyclopaedia is preparing to launch its fourth phase, supported by artificial intelligence and new technologies.
