Modern Standard Arabic as a target language in simultaneous interpreting

Languages that allow free word order, such as Arabic dialects, are of significant difficulty for neural machine translation (NMT) because of many scarce words and the inefficiency of NMT systems to translate these words. Unknown Word (UNK) tokens represent the out-of-vocabulary words for the reason that NMT systems run with vocabulary that has fixed size. Scarce words are encoded completely as sequences of subword pieces employing the Word-Piece Model. This research paper introduces the first Transformer-based neural machine translation model for Arabic vernaculars that employs subword units. The proposed solution is based on the Transformer model that has been presented lately. The use of subword units and shared vocabulary within the Arabic dialect (the source language) and modern standard Arabic (the target language) enhances the behavior of the multi-head attention sublayers for the encoder by obtaining the overall dependencies between words of input sentence for Arabic vernacular. Experiments are carried out from Levantine Arabic vernacular (LEV) to modern standard Arabic (MSA) and Maghrebi Arabic vernacular (MAG) to MSA, Gulf–MSA, Nile–MSA, Iraqi Arabic (IRQ) to MSA translation tasks. Extensive experiments confirm that the suggested model adequately addresses the unknown word issue and boosts the quality of translation from Arabic vernaculars to Modern standard Arabic (MSA).

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Idiomatic false friends in English and Modern Standard Arabic

Babel ◽

10.1075/babel.55.2.01wah ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 55 (2) ◽

pp. 101-123 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Ahmed Seddik Al-Wahy

Keyword(s):

Cultural Factors ◽

Literal Meaning ◽

Target Language ◽

Modern Standard Arabic ◽

Standard Arabic ◽

Semantic Development ◽

Social And Cultural Factors ◽

Idiomatic Meaning ◽

Selection Of ◽

Modern Standard

This paper discusses idiomatic false friends (IFFs) in two genetically unrelated languages, English and Arabic. IFFs are defined as set phrases in two languages that have the same literal meaning but differ as regards their idiomatic meaning or their sociolinguistic and stylistic features. The study proposes a taxonomy for IFFs based on data from English and Arabic, though it may also apply to IFFs in other language pairs. In the case of English and Arabic, IFFs are either related (typically partial) or unrelated (typically total). Related IFFs have their origin in loan-translation, with idioms being borrowed from English into Arabic and then taking a different course of semantic development in each language. There are also cases in which the selection of a single sense of a polysemous idiom can be attributed to social and cultural factors. It is shown that, if idioms in general are among the most challenging units for translators, IFFs can be doubly difficult. The translator may assume that since the source and target language idioms have the same form, they can also have the same meaning or stylistic features.

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The effects of motivation on processing instruction in the acquisition of Modern Standard Arabic gender agreement

Instructed Second Language Acquisition ◽

10.1558/isla.34879 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 61-82

Author(s):

Ayah Farhat ◽

Alessandro Benati

Keyword(s):

Academic Motivation ◽

Processing Instruction ◽

Gender Agreement ◽

Modern Standard Arabic ◽

Language Background ◽

Standard Arabic ◽

Positive Effects ◽

Sentence Level ◽

Post Test ◽

Modern Standard

The present study investigates the effects of motivation and processing instruction on the acquisition of Modern Standard Arabic gender agreement. The role of individual differences (e.g. age, gender, aptitude, language background and working memory) on the positive effects generated by processing instruction has been investigated in the last few years. However, no previous research has been conducted to measure the possible effects of motivation on L2 learners exposed to processing instruction. In addition, a reasonable question to be addressed within the processing instruction research framework is whether its positive effects can be generalised to the acquisition of Modern Standard Arabic. The Academic Motivation Scale (AMS) and the Attitude Motivation Test Battery (AMTB) motivation questionnaires were used to capture different variables that influence motivation in order to create the two different groups (high and low motivated). In this experimental study, forty-one native English school-age learners (aged 8–11) were assigned to two groups: ‘the high motivated group’ (n = 29): and the ‘low motivated group’ (n = 12). Both groups received processing instruction, which lasted for three hours. Sentence-level interpretation and production tasks were used in a pre-test and post-test design to measure instructional effects. The learners were required to fill in gaps in both written and spoken mode for the activities. The study also included a delayed post-test administered to the two groups four weeks later. The results indicated that both groups improved equally from pre-test to post-test in all assessment measures and they both retained the positive effects of the training in the delayed posttests. Processing instruction was proved to be the main factor for the improvement in performance regardless of the learner’s level of motivation.

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