King Salman Global Academy for the Arabic Language concluded its participation in the Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP 2023), held at the Global Conference Centre in Singapore from December 6 to 10. The event brought together a wide range of Saudi and international organizations specializing in the field.

As the Diamond Sponsor of the conference, the Academy aimed to explore the latest advancements in artificial intelligence models and apply them across its Arabic language initiatives such as digital corpora and dictionaries. It also sought to introduce researchers in natural language processing (NLP) to the Academy’s work, attract experts in NLP and AI to future competitions, and accelerate research in Arabic language computing.

Through its dedicated booth at the conference, the Academy showcased its growing leadership in Arabic NLP, in line with its strategic objectives to strengthen its international presence at global scientific events. The participation also promoted the Academy’s specialized AI and computational linguistics outputs, attracted experts in Arabic language technologies, and supported the development of new digital products that contribute to expanding the global presence of the Arabic language while preserving its linguistic integrity.

EMNLP is recognized as one of the world’s leading conferences in natural language processing and artificial intelligence. NLP is a field that combines linguistics, computer science, and AI to study the interaction between computers and human language, enabling machines to understand and process human communication to perform tasks automatically. Alongside the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) Conference, EMNLP is considered one of the most influential global events in NLP research.

On the sidelines of the conference, the Academy, represented by its Computational Linguistics Sector, organized a specialized competition titled “The Reverse Dictionary.” The competition featured two tracks: the first focused on retrieving an Arabic word from its Arabic definition, allowing users to search for words based on their meanings rather than by lexical entries, unlike traditional dictionaries. The second focused on retrieving an Arabic word from an English definition, designed to develop systems that convert English definitions into Arabic semantic vectors. This approach supports multilingual search and translation between English and Arabic.

The competition drew significant interest and participation from experts representing several countries. The Academy awarded cash prizes for both tracks, with first place receiving USD 350 (approximately SAR 1,300), second place USD 250 (approximately SAR 937), and third place USD 150 (approximately SAR 563).

The Academy’s participation reaffirmed Saudi Arabia’s strategic commitment to supporting initiatives that advance the Arabic language and its global presence. It also highlighted the Academy’s mission to invest in opportunities that strengthen Arabic language applications in technology and computational linguistics, ensuring that the Arabic language continues to thrive and compete in the digital age.