June 4, 2010 – The recently unveiled SAMAR Project team consists of the French government and international news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP). Their goal is to find a high-quality semantic search strategy for AFP’s Arabic-language news, audio, and video multimedia content.

The Arabic language presents unique challenges for content producers. The difficult linguistic patterns prohibit proper semantic tagging. This potential solution stirs hope that it could be a model platform for Arabic news organizations around the globe.  “SAMAR Project: Mapping Arabic Language to Aid News Searchers” reported on this new endeavor. Among the companies taking part in the SAMAR project is Paris-based corporation, TEMIS, the consortium’s ninth member. Temis provides knowledge extraction and information analysis and discovery with its text analytics enterprise solution Luxid. This content enrichment tool aids in understanding the Arabic language.

A daunting task, but if achieved it could help bridge a cultural and linguistic gap of giant proportions.

Melody K. Smith