[Paper Review] Critical Survey of the Freely Available Arabic Corpora

Wajdi Zaghouani|arXiv (Cornell University)|Feb 25, 2017

Natural Language Processing Techniques33 references87 citations

TL;DR

The paper surveys freely available Arabic corpora, identifying an initial list of 66 sources and providing direct access links.

ABSTRACT

The availability of corpora is a major factor in building natural language processing applications. However, the costs of acquiring corpora can prevent some researchers from going further in their endeavours. The ease of access to freely available corpora is urgent needed in the NLP research community especially for language such as Arabic. Currently, there is not easy was to access to a comprehensive and updated list of freely available Arabic corpora. We present in this paper, the results of a recent survey conducted to identify the list of the freely available Arabic corpora and language resources. Our preliminary results showed an initial list of 66 sources. We presents our findings in the various categories studied and we provided the direct links to get the data when possible.

Motivation & Objective

• Motivate NLP research in Arabic by addressing the cost barrier to corpus access.
• Identify and compile freely available Arabic corpora and language resources.
• Provide a categorized, up-to-date list of resources with direct access links when possible.
• Highlight preliminary findings and gaps to guide future resource collection and use.

Proposed method

• Conduct a survey to identify freely available Arabic corpora and resources.
• Compile an initial list of sources (about 66) identified in the study.
• Present findings categorized by resource type and provide direct links where possible.
• Publish a consolidated list to facilitate easier access for researchers.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 What freely available Arabic corpora and resources exist for NLP research?
• RQ2 How are these resources categorized and what access links are available?
• RQ3 What is the coverage of freely available resources across Arabic language domains?
• RQ4 What gaps remain in freely accessible Arabic corpora and resources?

Key findings

• Identified an initial list of 66 freely available Arabic corpora and resources.
• Findings are presented across various categories studied in the survey.
• Direct links to access the data are provided where possible.
• Resulted in a resource list intended to facilitate access for researchers.