Subject: conference on arabic nlp

atlas99 : arabic translation and localisation symposium tunis , may 26-28 , 1999 call for papers it is one of the five official languages of the united nations , it has 260 million native speakers , and is used as a second language by a further 1 . 3 billion people . arabic is certainly one of the world 's most important languages . yet for computer users , it is a third-class language . as there are several different encodings for arabic , and very few search engines capable of handling arabic , there are few arabic - language websites on the internet , most of them just graphic images . the atlas symposium asks why this should be so , and seeks to address the problems of . . . localisation to / from arabic teleconferencing in arabic translation into / out of arabic encoding standardisation for arabic , especially unicode information retrieval in arabic internet tools ( html editors , search engines , email , etc ) for arabic arabic nlp in general we invite contributions on any of the above topics , in english or french . a 200 - word abstract together with the author 's name and affiliation should be submitted , preferably by e-mail , to atlas @ issco . unige . ch by january 25th , 1999 . acceptance will be notified by 1st march . authors unable to submit by e-mail should send hard copy to the following address : atlas symposium , issco , 54 route des acacias , ch-1227 geneva , switzerland programme committee adnane zribi , universit de tunis iii , tunisia harold somers , umist , manchester , england ludovic tanguy , issco , geneva , switzerland rafik belhadj - kacem , epos sa , france susan armstrong - warwick , issco , geneva , switzerland schedule of dates submission deadline 25 january , 1999 acceptance notification 1 march , 1999 confirmation of participation 1 april , 1999 symposium dates 26-28 may , 1999 for more information , - see : http : / / www . ccl . umist . ac . uk / staff / harold / atlas / - or send email to : atlas @ issco . unige . ch
