A delegation from Qatar Science & Technology Park (QSTP), led by Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, chairperson of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF), unveiled Loghati, an online platform designed to make Arabic more accessible internationally during a visit to Italy.
“The Arabic language is poetic, but it risks being marginalized because it hasn’t modernized to meet today’s challenges. We need to revitalize the language,” said Sheikha Moza during the event.
Loghati means “my language” in Arabic. It is a technology created at QSTP which allows the creation of virtual libraries comprised of ancient and modern texts, where each document is a multi-dimensional information repository that can be accessed, amended, and instantly translated from Arabic into other languages and back again. It can also host audio and video material in its virtual libraries, offering people a full multimedia interface.
The platform employs an artificial intelligence that continuously “learns” and improves as more users interact with it. QSTP hopes the technology can help bridge cultural differences, and make Arabic knowledge and culture – which may be unavailable to millions due to the language barrier – more accessible.
“The Arab tradition for transferring knowledge, particularly among Bedouin people, was by word of mouth and the direct interaction between people. Loghati is the 21st century version of this tradition. This platform allows anyone to interface directly and seamlessly with great Arab works from anywhere in the world,” said Tidu Maini, Science and Technology Advisor and Chairman of QSTP.
QSTP hopes Loghati can be used to facilitate cross-cultural exchange and collaborative scientific research and allow the publication of more books.
this is an awesome project! Wow.
a thought though- a language so rich, so influential, so widely spoken, so widely read, so widely spread, native to such rich countries with such enormous resources barely has an international presence beyond its spoken in region (aside from the Arabic Qur’an).
Id be surprised if Spanish, Japanese or Chinese did not have more foreign speakers than Arabic does or if fewer Arabs spoke n wrote fluent English than non-Arabs spoke or read Arabic.
Why since the past 25 years can Arab students from 15 countries learn to speak read and write English at a university level in a few years while the Arabic learning can barely warrant even a comparison? Why have these countries and institutions in these countries not opened a thousand and one overseas institutes to teach Arabic (learn it for free) over the past 25, or past 10 years (cant afford it?)?
Why isn’t there a massive e-learning portal with the best resources and minds assembled to achieve and popularise that? Who is going to take on that? What would be the implications if even one hundred and one free or low low fee institutes had been active in major cities for one thousand and one nights?
Even communist USSR offered Russian language courses leading to fluency, through to academic levels, through its cultural centres in a hundred locations during the Cold War ? When are we going to see some activity on that…inshallah…