Universal Networking Language (UNL) project at the BA
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Alexandria, 7 July 2005—The International School of Information Science (ISIS) at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) is currently working on one of its largest research projects entitled, Universal Networking Language (UNL), in cooperation with the Universal Networking Digital Language (UNDL) Foundation.
The mission of the UNL program, initiated within the United Nations and devised by the UNDL Foundation, is to enable all people to generate information and have access to cultural knowledge in their native languages.
The project is concerned mainly with automatic translation based on the Interlingua concept for supporting multi languages. The core of a UNL system consists of a pair of software to bridge natural languages with UNL; an Enconverter, converting expressions from native language to UNL, and a Deconverter, converting expressions from UNL into native languages. Currently, 15 languages have been involved and a number of institutions have started working on their respective languages.
For the Arabic language, a team was formed of BA members and the best linguists from Egyptian universities. Progress made so far includes the design of the Arabic dictionary and production of its first version with about 88,000 entries. In addition, the workflow for developing the Deco (deconversion) rules within the Arabic deconversion component has been established. The team is currently working on the design of the UNL Library Information System (LIS) in preparation for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).