Towards networking efforts to build an Arabic Cooperation Roadmap

The development of language resources and tools for the Arabic language is important for the economy in the Arab countries; it is also important for the culture. By focussing on Arabic language technology and making both the technology and content available in Arabic, the use of Arabic will grow and the demand for foreign language information will decrease. At the same time language technology can help access information in foreign languages, and finally, it can help spread Arabic ideas and culture to non-Arabic languages. The goal of the MEDAR project¹, supported by the European Commission ICT² programme, is to establish a network of partner centres of best practice in Arabic dedicated to promoting Arabic HLT³. MEDAR partners have collected knowledge about existing language resources, players, products etc, and based on this knowledge and additional research, the present report has been compiled. We will present a first version of the cooperation roadmap for Arabic language technology.