Arabic language resources and tools for speech and natural language

Abstract

Although 5% of the world population speak Arabic as a native language, the research on Arabic is not up to its number of speakers.However, more research has been don on Arabic in the last decade due to many factors including the widespread of communicationand information technology applications. Two of the eminent research centres in the Arab World which contributed markedly onresearch related to Arabic are King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) and University of Balamand (UOB). Thispaper is to highlight the efforts of these two institutions on enriching the Arabic language resources including that on natural languageprocessing, speech processing and character recognition.