A system for processing bilingual Arabic/English text

✍ Scribed by Musa, F. A.

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1986
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 398 KB
• Volume: 37
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0002-8231
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-4571(198609)37:5<288::aid-asi2>3.0.co;2-9

✦ Synopsis

The production of high-quality Arabic/English text poses technical problems that are caused mainly by the high degree of syntactical flexibility which characterizes the Arabic language. This article describes a system with adequate solutions to the problems encoun. tered in processing bilingual Arabic/English text. introduction The English language and the Arabic language are two very dissimilar languages. The rules applied when writing in English contrast with the rules applied in writing Arabic. Arabic is written from right to left while English is written from left to right. The shape of every Arabic character varies depending on the neighboring characters in an Arabic word. The Arabic language has a different overall morphosytactical structure than the English language, upon which almost ail computer systems for processing text are built.

Computer systems for processing text in English and other Latin-based languages were designed and impiemented when computers were introduced for commercial applications. Standards were established at almost the same time.

The introduction of computer systems for processing Arabic text began 15 years ago. Some solutions to the problems of processing Arabic were introduced [3], but none of the software and hardware which have been introduced fulfill the requirements to process high-quality Arabic text [2]. Each system introduced uses its own coding scheme and a different approach for solving the problems encountered in processing Arabic script. In October, 1982, ASMO 449, a 7-bit coded Arabic character set for information interchange, was announced [2]. It remains to be seen whether this system will be internationally recognized as an Arabic standard code.