Call for Papers: The 1st Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script (AbjadNLP 2025)

[amal HADDAD HADDAD]

URL: https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/abjad/

Submission URL: https://softconf.com/coling2025/AbjadNLP25/

 

AbjadNLP 2025 aims to advance innovation in Natural Language Processing (NLP) for languages using the Arabic script, focusing on Abjad and Ajami languages. These languages represent a significant segment of the global linguistic mosaic, spanning numerous countries and regions. By focusing on these languages, we aim to enhance the versatility and adaptability of NLP models and applications, fostering multilingualism and multiculturalism in NLP research. This workshop will address the unique challenges and solutions associated with these languages, promoting inclusive and equitable advancements in NLP.

 

Ajami languages, representing a myriad of African languages that have adopted the Arabic script, span at least 43 distinct languages, including Hausa, Fulfulde, Mandingo, Swahili, Wolof, Kanuri, and Tamazight. The combined number of speakers of these languages is estimated to exceed 200 million within Africa alone. Although Abjad has been traditionally associated with Semitic languages such as Arabic, Hebrew and Syriac, it has been adopted for writing by many other language communities as in Perso-Arabic scripts used in Persian, Urdu, Pashto, Sorani Kurdish, Azeri Turkish, Sindhi, and Uyghur, with a collective estimated speaker population exceeding 500 million. Altogether, these languages represent an approximate global aggregate of 1 billion speakers.

 

>> We invite submissions on the following topics:

Core Technologies: morphological analysis, disambiguation, tokenisation, POS tagging, named entity detection, chunking, parsing, semantic role labelling, sentiment analysis, language modelling, etc.

Applications: machine translation, speech recognition, speech synthesis, optical character recognition, assistive technologies, social media, etc.

Resources and Tools: dictionaries, annotated data, corpora, orthography descriptions, font technology, glyph rendering, text input methodologies, spell-checking, speech-to-text solutions, BLARK descriptions, open access corpora.

Cultural and Sociolinguistic Considerations: text processing, transliteration challenges, and solutions, cultural contexts in NLP applications.

 

>> Submission Guidelines:

We follow the COLING 2025 standards for submission format and guidelines. Submissions should conform to the following types:

 

Long papers: Up to eight (8) pages, presenting substantial, original, completed, and unpublished work.

Short papers: Up to four (4) pages, describing a small focused contribution, negative results, system demonstrations, etc.

 

>> Key Dates:

1st Call for Papers Announcement: 16 July 2024

2nd Call for Papers Announcement: 16 August 2024

Paper Submission Deadline: 15 November 2024

Notification of Paper Acceptance: 6 December 2024

Camera-ready Paper Deadline: 13 December 2024

Workshop Date: 19 or 20 January 2025

 

>> Organising Committee:

 

General Chair:

- Mo El-Haj, Lancaster University

 

Programme Chairs:

- Hugh Paterson III, Collaborative Scholar

- Saad Ezzini, Lancaster University

- Ignatius Ezeani, Lancaster University

 

Review Committee:

- Manum Hayat Khan, University of La Rioja

- Muhammad Sharjeel, COMSATS University Islamabad

 

Publication Chair:

- Sina Ahmadi, University of Zurich

 

Publicity Chairs:

- Cynthia Amol, Maseno University

- Amal Haddad Haddad, University of Granada

- Jaleh Delfani, University of Surrey

 

Advisory Committee:

- Ruslan Mitkov, Lancaster University

- Paul Rayson, Lancaster University