2009
the Arabic language in the digital time: six tragedies, and three proposals!
the Arabic language in the digital time: six Tragedies, and three proposals!
Habib Abdrab pleasure
(1) Introduction: some controversy about the tragedy and the reality of the Arabic language in the digital time!
uses the Arabs, more and more numbers for good luck, E-mail and browse Internet sites and newspapers, and download materials from electronic articles and songs ... If the reader considered this the Arab presence affiliation for the digital age, It is best not to continue reading this article, because this is exactly like a judicious reader who knows the human b «a living breathing and eating and drinking only »!...
objective of this article: 1) mapping The tragic emptiness of Arabic language presence in the digital time, 2) draw the attention of everyone for the delay awful to start building the base infrastructure for its presence on the Internet, while the most complete States upon this rule, which took several decades before it begins the era of digitization projects and cognitive giant, 3) raise the controversial Arabic and widely about this delay, 4) included the largest group Lovers of the Arabic language book, researchers, teachers and students, and decision-makers as well (whatever their awareness of the weakness of the utmost importance to save the Arabic language, or their genuine desire to Entering the recovery room) to work to achieve specific objectives integrated to save our language, which we love very much love! ...
before the six listed Alfjaia make clear to the reader that the Arab in the digital age A giant straw, I have to give definitions ...!
(2) the text paper and digital text: Two new definitions are necessary, before the narrative Alfjaia!
whether the definition of an easy text paper («is the text written Or printed on a number of papers ...») definition Digital Text harder and a much broader: It is the text of the reach of a network of computers (a computer that consists of at least one, or that includes all Desktop PCs Universe if necessary) and read on a screen. However, privacy has several very important and wealth, there is no paper in the text, most notably the now cite:
a) is a hypertext, Hypertext: joins the All media together, voice, image and video, interactive and beautiful container output, multi-dimensional genius content! For this is the finest and the richest cultural media defined by Since the dawn of human history! ... (Perhaps the words: «HyperText», which are often used to translate the Hypertext is not very appropriate!).
b) is the text of an open (not closed, such as paper-based text, which begins The first page and ends with the latter), thanks to «hypertext links high», Hypertext Links, usually referred her lines the bottom of any word, which allows (when clicked) to move to another position in the same Text or to any other text in any computer on the outskirts of the globe. These links can also go to the automated dictionaries to explain the meanings of words of text, or provide any information About ...
c) is the text of the antenna, can be accessed from any device (PC, mobile phone, electronic gaming device, a new e-reader ...) and from anywhere: the office, street, The beach, sleeping bed, toilet ... There is an elegant traditional metaphor depicting Privacy correctly: Cloud Computing, or «cloud» If I may say so ...!
d) is the text of the atomic Indexing (All words are indexed, not only chapters like the paper book), thanks to the so-called: «Search Engines» universal (such as Gogol, which currently contains more than 25 billion text, and one billion files, distributed Half a million computers in 32 locations geographically honest, many of which Ttakndq near nuclear reactors) ... Thanks can access the digital text in a manner not unimaginable genius A few years ago: enough to provide for the Search Engines a word or a few words from the text or title, or a few words concerning him, in order to put these motors in front of the text reader (Such as magical Seal of Solomon) and submit it to the screen in a few seconds! Not only that, but made available to the reader at the same time also, all the texts, documents and books on Internet that contain those words provided to the Search Engines! ... Not to appear to the truth here more miraculous than fiction? ...
e) The text is easy to update (requires seconds only occasionally, Unlike the text of the paper needs to be reprinted!), Easy backup and transport and transmission (this is done in the pleasures!), Easy to carry (not the weight of his burden or to Ucestikip!), Does not have any environmental harm caused by such Text paper! ... Not to mention it's cheaper than paper of the text of the disappearance of the need for paper, ink and printing presses and distribution libraries! ...
(3) the first bereavement: The language without a knowledge building below!
rolled to the world since the beginning of the nineties of the last century, especially the West and the Far East, backed by the giant projects, universities and public institutions, for the digitization of construction Infrastructure of knowledge and practical life of the texts of scientific, technical, and a variety of cultural, studies, lectures and lessons for students from primary school to university (I drive a personal project Contribute to a French national where some universities and research centers, associated with digitizing some materials «Alhessobat linguistic»), and dictionaries, encyclopedias, maps, geographic send live satellite Industrial directly. But the Arab world live on another planet far Mnmlp College for these activities and projects very core! ...
result today are glaring: Internet portals To build knowledge infrastructure to all of them (the gates of the official national projects and digital libraries free specialized in various fields, the location of public educational institutions Or private universities and research centers, teachers or students ...) full of millions of pages that make up the digital architecture of the new communities of knowledge! ...
reader finds today in the sites Internet those states millions of texts, books, scientific and cultural digital! ... All heavily b «hypertext links high», which allows instantaneous transition to direct all the references Digital mentioned in those texts and books on the Internet. Most of all rich-media audio and video images and three-dimensions, loaded with Pettmthelat laboratory experiments The texts of lectures, video and audio, renewable and advanced in every moment! ... There are millions of
lectures, scientific articles, exercises and unsolved scientific experiments and studies And research provided through an educational interactive rich fresh, in all languages ... However, Arabic!
There are also new components for building digital infrastructure of knowledge did not exist before the Internet, Became one of the most important fountains of knowledge on a global level: encyclopedias which are developed and instructive day, in an interactive collaborative Kony, making the paper look like encyclopedias Compared to the severe poverty and backwardness! ...
necessary to point out here on the Wikipedia, for example, that anyone can volunteer enrich any language, which has become a reference Millions of people every day! ... Difficult here not to mention that most of the bricks this encyclopedia, especially in the most scientific and cultural fields, devoid of the translation into Arabic, in While often translated into the languages of the least actively traded of the Arab much! ... Enough to open this encyclopedia on the Internet and providing a word, a language other than Arabic, Motor Search encyclopedia, to see the text Encyclopedic on this floor as a translator for many languages or at least the most heavily traded issue on both, but Arabic! (Deaf and disaster Otm: often there is not even a companion Arabic to that word !)... Number of topics written in Polish-language Wikipedia, for example, is equal to ten times what is written in Arabic about! ...
a nutshell: In all scientific and technical areas, and in most fields of cultural and practical, have languages (except Arabic) on the base knowledge infrastructure, digital multimedia (excluded Text paper and completely replaced, to appear, in these areas at least, like remnants of the Stone Age!). Industry knowledge, which entered the race every day! The base infrastructure Knowledge in Arabic they are absent entirely: There is no Arab projects even deserve mention in this regard! ...
Perhaps the Arabic language is dying day by quietly failure to keep pace Time Digital: can not find where the student or teacher wanted to find! So, for example, has become a scientific subjects taught in foreign languages in private schools in the Arab world, In many public schools as well. Not to mention the almost total absence of Arabic in the teaching of scientific, technical and medical in almost all Arab universities, because of non-use To write a modern knowledge! ... Perhaps for this reason it is today more and more «language not suitable for modern, with no terms »!...
(4) bereavement II: The language of suffering from anemia translation!
known Wide campaign that translation of various languages of Greek, Syriac, Persian, Sanskrit, Ethiopian, in the Abbasid period, the foreign books in various fields of philosophy The logic of medicine, astronomy, mathematics and literature, enriched Brawfd Arab intellectual and many words and terms, to become by virtue of that universal language of civilization in the Middle Ages (such as Greek by birth, , English, French and English today).
It is also known that Japan was transformed from a backward country at the start of the nineteenth century to one of the most advanced countries in the world today, However, thanks to the campaign of a broad translation of each Knowledge West and its achievements and educational policy, from the translation of the other more sophisticated creations, and inspired by his approach, is the key to catch up with him! ...
In recent decades, China has also launched an extensive campaign to fierce global knowledge translation, especially Western, on the basis of the same principle. Used the means of modern technology, Particularly the Internet. Made presentations and rewards for translators from specialists or students, inside and outside China. Opened institutes and university departments and organized many competitions for the translation! ...
there today (Thanks to the computer, new computer science, especially science «Alhessobat linguistic») modalities of a new mechanism, allowing for the computer translation of the text without an interpreter, and instantly! Software Produced by these scientific and technical developments can now translate the book, or an Internet site, a few minutes. May still be translated as a result of inaccurate or good sometimes, especially When you translate texts of literary and linguistic complexity. But it helps to have the text of the initial ore is very fast, simply repaired and improved manually for the final translation! ... Still use this technique Arab very weak despite the possibility of investing strongly, especially to bridge the translation of scientific, technical and cultural ...!
anemia Arabic translation Flagrant today: Many of the books the eyes of the world has not seen the light of day in Arabic! Most of the mothers of modern books that are Npras contemporary civilization is known in Arabic! Enough to accommodate Note that the scale of the disaster what could be translated in Israel ten years after its founding more than all the translation of the Arabs since the start of the nineteenth century to today! ...
(5) bereavement III: Language No blog!
Code of any language, (Corpus), is a huge (billions in longer words) of the samples of texts written or spoken, the following diverse range of sector-neutral sources (Newspapers and magazines written and audio-visual, miscellaneous books, debates, reports, Internet sites ...), which gives a full and accurate picture of the language in its various forms And uses everyday, scientific, literary and practical, during a certain time ...!
languages today have their code, sometimes called «banks Language». There are gates on the Internet to allow access for «bases graphs» huge and the specified search with it, or processed automatically in the total! Of their treasures (which is supplying them with every day) draw Dictionaries in specialized areas of language and scientific, technical and practical. Is the laboratory, who graduated from diverse linguistic studies of the structure of language, and various manifestations Implications of her words, the shortcomings and needs, renewable for dictionaries history and origins of words and their relationship to other languages (dictionaries Aliithomologip that do not yet exist in the language Arab )!...
exciting and painful irony that the Arabic language which was the first of the foundations of language dictionaries and glossaries (since Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Faraaheedi the dictionary eye, and perhaps Asma'i before that), which had its golden age in a leading role in the establishment of studies and exchange as the genius, and classification of vocabulary and arrange their roots and their derivations, and the formation of each Dictionaries (including dictionaries of the jinn and devils!), Which opened early on the languages of the world since the Abbasid era and a campaign rich in translations, so far does not have its code language, Or any dictionary Iithomologi! ...
(6) bereavement IV: Language without a «light of the unrecognized characters»!
optical character recognizer, Recogonizer Optical Character, OCR, (Optical reader or automated) program basal Possesses all the necessary language, converts the text allows the photographer a camera or a scanner (Scaner) into digital text that can be opened electronic publisher (such as «received»), and the archive file on your PC! ... Even today there is no optical reader to Arabic deserves that name! (Sold in Arab markets, software is good for this purpose, threw out some of the bought in the trash, Despite the heavy price tag!).
a non-design optical code reader for automatic Arabic characters until now a major obstacle to prevent entry into the era of digitization, because it alone allows the transfer of Photos pages of the book to digital texts! ... Without need of a new re-print what has been written in Arabic on the computer! ... All languages used today, which has a reader scanned automatically , Electronic devices with «Robotics» can a few minutes, and are fully automatic, open the book and filmed page by page, and pass the automated optical reader to convert it into digital text, Before the archiving and sticky in the global Internet space to reach parts of the world in a trice! ...
some of these devices, which will cost per day of which about a quarter million dollars, operating in this I write this article, to digitize hundreds of books a day, in languages other than Arabic! ... In 2007 only No.n project Gogol million books thanks to this technology!.
transmission of text Phase of the paper, digital text to wander the Internet global network of computers, is a passage from the stage of ancient civilized much superior to the other (like, without exaggeration, the transition From the era of candles to the era of electricity) because of its digital text of the specification put out by the above!
represents the absence of automatic optical reader for photos texts in Arabic nationalism difficult dilemma Imagine the possibility of its existence today, in any country, let alone the world has some of its material wealth and the possibilities are enormous, as the world Arab! ...
(7) bereavement Fifth: The language without correction techniques Search Engines and convenient!
provided a democratic Internet and ease of electronic publishing direct writing and publishing easy for everyone, not only for the elite, as was the case before the Internet! ... If that was a blessing for the peoples of the revolutions that have taken place, updates, and reforms in their own languages, and computer software which is designed to correct the texts before placing it on the Internet, it is a curse The real calamity in the Arab world who did not develop the language for centuries, which is packed with illiterates, which is not an exaggeration to say that many of the graduates of schools (and universities sometimes) half- Illiterate during the writing! ...
dangerous issue in fact, because the web pages in Arabic (in particular, chat forums and dialogues, and news pages and general comments on the events Daily and writings ...) stained jungle of language and spelling errors that do not unimaginable! ... Amazing that the number of words written Bgltat spelling on the Internet has more than Days the same number of written words without errors! Which threatens that it will be replaced, by virtue of the principle of the rule of statistical majority, at any automatic processing of the Arabic language with All that is written on the Internet! ... Who knows, you may also be replaced in the eyes of Arab readers, especially readers of future generations, by virtue of the principle of «Natural Selection» Famous Darwinist, Because these errors are the most visible and reference! ...
I shall give for example what it means lack of Search Engines, Kjojul, a debugger for a language Arabic: enough to offer to Gogol written word error: «Isomowon», or «Mriz»! To receive thousands of web pages carrying this line of the written word, because there is no debugger for the Arabic language facility Bmuturat search! If you write the word Spelling mistake in another language, like French: «Mangeoons» Fissesahhaa Motor Gogol automatically to become: «Mangeons» before to give you web pages that contain this word corrected! ... Engines Find the same, Kjojul, are not suitable for Arabic, it does not take privacy discharges and their synonyms in mind during your search! ...
appalling that affected millions of pages of Arab Astronomical numbers of spelling errors archived today in the Internet like the others. Are all, without discrimination, the arsenal of the Arabic texts on the net cosmic! ... And the like This arsenal, sometimes old sheikh, exhausted, engulfed viruses! ...
(8) bereavement Sixth: The language did not enter the era of digitization yet!
entered many countries in recent years, After completing construction of the bases of digital infrastructure (automatic optical reader for the characters, a code of language, translation and the mechanism of hand-intensive programs, correct language and appropriate research Engines ...) era Digitization projects giant: I remember, for example, is not limited to: project Gogol and some senior national libraries in 2004 digitizing 15 million books, Microsoft's parallel project, French National Library Project digitization of 6 million books, a draft European countries of the North ...
Arabic language is not lacking completely heartbreaking isotopes of these projects only, but did not Begin after the construction of infrastructure base! ... Arabic numerals, which I will say it now alone explain the ferocity of the tragedy: the Arabic Language Academy in Algeria, which is supported by the Arab League budget Especially since 1975, and in charge of the establishment of «ammunition Arab», No.n so far only a few hundreds of Arabic books, because of the absence of this infrastructure! Intends to draft an Arab country Digitization of a very small number of Arabic books, I feel ashamed to mention ...! That's all in the Arab-handed! ...
is no doubt that there are sites Arab deserves all the promotion and development as «probe», «Warraq» «prophet», «BA», «knowledge», «rock» ... And others ignorant of the sites dedicated efforts dedicated to strengthening the presence of Arab and interaction With languages, and the digitization of knowledge and books by ... But will remain weak influence if not embraced by a national project Jabbar, the objectives of an integrated process specific ...!
(9) Three proposals ...
in The direction of this project, I offer three interrelated proposals for cultural and educational institutions, Arab, and Arab governments and the League of Arab States (though I hope dimmed So that convergence on deaf ears!):
(1) benefit from China's experience in translation, based on the techniques of the digital age: Open competitions for all translations (translators traditional, Students and professionals, authors, institutes and departments of translation), and rewards are given according to parameters selected by expert committees of arbitration, in light of the Arabic translation for the translation of the equivalent of ten thousand A book a year! ... These books can be translated in the Internet portals to reach for all, without having to print most of them necessarily! ...
(2) open competitions for university teachers Inside or outside the Arab world, develop their standards and choose their offers successful arbitration committees specialized portals aimed at building a digital model Arab lessons on the Internet for Arab students In various scientific and technical materials, using modern multimedia techniques! ...
(3) complete the infrastructure of the Arabic language on the Internet (automatic optical reader of characters, and a blog Of the Arabic language, Search Engines and software appropriate correction techniques, an ...) within 3 years! ...
(10) Conclusion
known that there are profound physiological relationship between thinking and language. Arab freeze (which did not know the radical reforms needed to keep pace with the times, like the rest of languages) is the anchor that pulls the ship and the Arab mind Tbaraka centuries ago! ... Delay Today to begin building a base infrastructure, which will bring them to fight a major digitization projects, expand the vast divide that separates Arabs from the rest of the developed world ...! Perhaps the metaphor
«Tortoise and the hare» today no longer appropriate to compare the speed of evolution of the Arab world in relation to the West and the Far East who have come to be, thanks to major digitization projects, like Winged Bunny! While Omst Slhvatna Arab dear lame, devoured by viruses! ...
there with the proposals made by an integrated process of this article, may contribute to the change Something, if any of them turns and wraps around and discuss, develop and turning it into a practical reality! ... Maybe the right key of the knowledge society, which no development or development without it! ...
thanks:
thank from the depths, Mr. Adnan Aziz rods, the automatic translator: the probe, and Professor Inam eggs, Director of the Higher Arab Institute for Translation in Algeria, On a series of discussions with them that were so useful. Convicted of two strained my interest in many of the issues against this article which was not to his analysis and proposals to see the light Sometimes, but for interaction and debate with them ...!
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