An assessment of the use of the arabic language tools in knowledge management

Abstract

Language is a vehicle to support knowledge representation and transfer. Accordingly, people rely on language to share their knowledge. The fact that knowledge sharing is a major activity in knowledge management implies that language has a major role to play in this process. In the case of Lebanon, a majority of enterprises, of different natures, utilizes non Arabic conversations and documents in their daily operations, while the native spoken language is Arabic. This paper explores the literature on the role of language in knowledge management. An emphasis is placed on the use of language tools and their role. An investigation into the use of Arabic language and related tools for knowledge management is made. The results of literature review are used for a survey run on 50 employees in 15 educational, financial and tourist enterprises. The survey results showed that employees rely on language tools to handle exceptional situations, especially to translate Arabic non-technical terms. Some problems are recorded. As a conclusion, the need to update and publish specialized ontologies, and integrate them in the commonly used language tools, is highlighted. Some specifications are proposed.