Please feel free to reach out to me at turkiabdelwaheb@hotmail.fr for any questions regarding the session.

This session occurred with 19 participants. A recording has been done by the Production Team. However, I do not know whether it will be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.

In T322067#8367429, @dcausse wrote:

@Nikki this sparql endpoint states:

Notice: This SPARQL endpoint is maintained by NCBO for demo purposes. It serves as playground to explore BioPortal's ontologies in RDF and we do not recommend its use for production applications or heavy batch processing. As an alternative, our virtual appliance is packaged with a SPARQL endpoint that can be used for local deployments.

So I'm not sure it'd be wise to add it to our whitelist?

Please find the slides at https://w.wiki/5ZpE.

@Aklapper, I have presented the session as shown in the Program. This session has been attended by 30 participants from the Wikimedia Community and eight people at the Wikimania in-person event held in Monastir, Tunisia. This was a live session of the Hackathon and as well for the in-person event in Monastir, Tunisia. We received interesting points that will be interesting to develop the work and we will certainly consider them for developing our research work.

To clarify, I give an example of a Wikidata property that can be included there according to our discussion: "Instance of".

We already discussed this as Data Engineering and Semantics Research Unit, University of Sfax. We should include there the basic and taxonomic properties.

In T281360#7079195, @Lea_Lacroix_WMDE wrote:

Hello, and thanks for your proposal!
We would like to offer you to present on Saturday 22nd at 14:00 UTC. Instead of the main track, we would like to offer you to present in one of the hacking rooms on Jitsi, where you will be able to interact directly with the participants and work on a more collaborative way.
How does it work for you? Please let me know before May 17th so we can complete scheduling.

@Aklapper I thank you for your answer. As promised, I discussed with all users about the issue and I presented the outcomes of that discussion in Wikimania 2019 conference. You can find my presentation at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Languages_lightning_talks.webm and https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimania_2019_-_Arabic_Linguistics.pdf. The topic seems to be controversial. Middle Eastern users are struggling the idea despite all my attempts to convince them of the importance of this action. If all Arabic languages/dialects become recognized and supported, we will be able to enrich Wikidata with information about these languages. Please go through my Wikimania presentation and decide the best solution to the matter.

I am Houcemeddine Turki from Tunisia. I am a medical student. However, I like Computer Science. I have some skills of Python and SQL. I ask if I can enter as a student in your GSoC 2019 project.

@Bassem I see, I do not know that as I am not Lebanese. Well, I am a Tunisian citizen :). Thank you for the information. Our proposal is not related to Said Akl's thoughts. It is just for linguistic purposes and to avoid spending time on creating tens of Wikipedias in Arabic dialects.

@1339861mzb Done. Let us continue our discussion in https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Tunisie/WikiLingua_Maghreb.

@Bassem @Ibrahim.ID @1339861mzb
As you have seen, there is no political reason behind the proposal. The reason is linguistic. However, if you would like to further discuss with me about that, please keep in mind that phabricator is a website for Wikimedia technical discussions. That is why I invite you to continue our discussion in https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Tunisie/WikiLingua_Maghreb.

@Bassem Concerning the intelligibility of Modern Standard Arabic, I did not say that Arab people do not understand Modern Standard Arabic at all. What I said is "Due to the existence of False friends between Modern Standard Arabic and Arabic dialects and due to the existence of several morphological particularities within the Arabic dialects, some Arabs can misunderstand some words within a text in Modern Standard Arabic. Adding labels to Wikidata entities will prevent such misunderstandings".

@Bassem This is an article about Said Akl experience published in the Egyptian newspaper Al Youm Al Saba' in 2017.
http://m.youm7.com/story/2017/11/28/تعرف-على-حكاية-اللغة-اللبنانية-التى-اخترعها-سعيد-عقل/3530454
If the project has already been finished since 20 years, I ask about why people still deal about it.

@Bassem You can contact Franck Salameh and discuss this with him. He can give you more details about the Said Akl experience:
https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=c6JYttwAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra
https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/schools/mcas/departments/slavic-eastern/people/faculty-directory/salameh-franck.html

@Bassem You can describe better than me the situation of Lebanese as you are one of its native speakers. However, from what I see, there are still some channels like MTV Lebanon that deals with the efforts of Said Akl and that still use Said Akl's Arabic script writing system.

@1339861mzb This is not always accurate. Moroccan Arabic is used in Education in Morocco. There are also efforts in this context in Algeria, in Tunisia, and in Lebanon. Furthermore, there are many resources that are written in Arabic dialects/languages since the early 20th Century. Scientists in Tunisia have even found school lessons, mystic poems, religious speeches, and administrative information written in Tunisian during the 18th and 19th Century. We will publish a paper about that. However, this is not the most important reason about adding labels in Arabic dialects to Wikidata. In fact, there are many false friends between Arabic dialects and Modern Standard Arabic. Adding labels in Arabic dialects to Wikidata will prevent users from misunderstanding the articles of the Arabic Wikipedia. Furthermore, there are many Arab people who do not have sufficient proficiency to read and understand Modern Standard Arabic as it should be due to the poor literacy rates in some Arab countries. Letting all human knowledge as provided by Wikidata converted into their Arabic dialect will help them to better understand the information they are searching for in Wikipedia editions.

@Nikerabbit If you need several other information, please write me soon.

@Nikerabbit

• Geographical areas:

apc: Syria, Lebanon
ajp: Palestine, Jordan
afb: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE, Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar
acw: Saudi Arabia
ars: Saudi Arabia
ayh: Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Singapore, Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan, Indonesia, Malaysia
ayn: Yemen
acq: Yemen, Djibouti, and Somalia
acm: Iraq, Syria, Iran, Turkey, Cyprus, and Armenia
acy: Cyprus
arz: Egypt
avl: Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, and Syria
apd: Sudan
abv: Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi Arabia
ayl: Libya
aeb-arab: Tunisia
arq: Algeria
ary: Morocco
mea: Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Morocco, and Algeria
aao: Algeria, Western Sahara, and Niger
shu: Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria, Niger, and Sudan

@Nikerabbit

• Their script is Arabic script.
• Their language codes and English names are: North Levantine Arabic (apc), South Levantine Arabic (ajp), Gulf Arabic (afb), Hejazi Arabic (acw), Najdi Arabic (ars), Hadhrami Arabic (ayh), Sanaani Arabic (ayn), Ta'izzi-Adeni Arabic (acq), Mesopotamian Arabic (acm), Cypriot Arabic (acy), Egyptian Arabic (arz), Northwest Arabian Arabic (avl), Sudanese Arabic (apd), Bahrani Arabic (abv), Libyan Arabic (ayl), Tunisian Arabic (aeb-arab), Algerian Arabic (arq), Moroccan Arabic (ary), Hassaniya Arabic (mea), Saharan Arabic (aao), and Chadian Arabic (shu).
• Native names:

apc: الشامي الشمالي
ajp: الشامي الجنوبي
afb: الخليجي
acw: الحجازي
ars: النجدي
ayh: الحضرمي
ayn: الصنعاني
acq: التعزي
acm: العراقي
acy: القبرصي
arz: المصري
avl: الرقاوي, الشاوي, or البدوي
apd: السوداني
abv: البحراني
ayl: الليبي
aeb-arab: التونسي
arq: الجزايرية
ary: المغربي
mea: الحسانية
aao: الصحراوي
shu: التشادي

@Nikerabbit So, I ask if you can add these Arabic languages to ULS.

@Baba_Tabita We will begin working on Tunisian, Algerian, Moroccan and Egyptian as they are already supported by ULS.

@Baba_Tabita That's clear. I will see what I can do.

@Mbch331 I will not raise the priority again. However, please try to work on it

Done. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1miJbao225aXgxbpgZNq6GTiDZcmvFYNuM2vE64mFozc/edit?usp=sharing.

In T187344#3981589, @GerardM wrote:

Hoi,
I understand how this could work for the dictionary part of Wikidata. I
understand how it could work for labels and aliases. Why do you think this
will work for descriptions?
Thanks,

GerardM

In T187344#3981552, @GerardM wrote:

Hoi,
In principle the language committee has given permission for monolingual
texts. This is NOT given for labels, descriptions and aliases. That
requires involvement of native speakers. It requires an agreement of the
language committee.

What makes you think you can add labels and descriptions correctly?
Thanks,

GerardM

In T187344#3981503, @Mbch331 wrote:

You want it for labels and descriptions or for properties of the type monolingual text? If you want the first, then the dialects/languages need to be added to ULS for the second a patch of the Wikidata settings are needed.

If all Arabic languages will be added to Wikidata, I will try to add labels to all Wikidata entities in all Arabic languages very soon. Consequently, if we translate Mediawiki messages and the names of Wikidata entities to all Arabic languages, we will have Wikidata and consequently the sum of all human knowledge translated into all Arabic languages. Consequently, there will be no need to create stub Wikipedias and Wiktionaries in these Arabic languages

I ask if LangCom is for or against adding all Arabic dialects/languages to Wikidata.

@Mbch331 Well, I discussed that with Wikidata community. I do not think that someone will be against this task.

@Bassem @Ibrahim.ID: I ask if you can understand this. This is written in Tunisian.

@Bassem I do not agree. Arabic dialects are not the same as Modern Standard Arabic. There are many false friends between them and each one of them has its linguistic particularities and this is what is proved in many research works.

In T187344#3979591, @Csisc wrote:

@GerardM I know that. However, this is not what I meant.

@GerardM I know that. However, this is not what I meant.

@alanajjar I only proposed these dialects because they have Wikimedia language codes.

We are only waiting for the support to begin our work.

In T187344#3974892, @Nikerabbit wrote:

With more details this information can be added to https://github.com/wikimedia/language-data/blob/master/data/langdb.yaml (you can also see the expected format there, you need language code, writing script, geographical area and autonym. I think multiple of those listed are already in there. This is required for the ULS language selector to be able to list these languages.

For Wikidata side, I don't know exactly that they need to do about languages that are not supported by MediaWiki as an interface language, but I think it is a simple code or configuration change.

For a language to be "supported" by MediaWiki in the common sense, it needs at least 13% of the MediaWiki core interface messages translated. For other use cases (which require language code to be "known") it should suffice to add the English names in the CLDR extension to LocalNamesEn.php for languages not yet supported by CLDR.

This proposal is a part of the outcomes of the presentation about Wikidata in AICCSA 2017 conference.

If we add labels in Arabic dialects to all Wikidata entities, we will have Wikidata and consequently all the data existing in Wikipedia and Wiktionary translated to Arabic dialects. Consequently, we will not have to create Wikipedias or Wiktionaries in all the Arabic dialects. Who needs more information about an entity in Wikidata can search Arabic, French or English Wikipedia.

Native names:
apc: الشامي الشمالي
ajp: الشامي الجنوبي
afb: الخليجي
acw: الحجازي
ars: النجدي
ayh: الحضرمي
ayn: الصنعاني
acq: التعزي
acm: العراقي
acy: القبرصي
arz: المصري
avl: الرقاوي, الشاوي, or البدوي
apd: السوداني
abv: البحراني
ayl: الليبي
aeb-arab: التونسي
arq: الجزايرية
ary: المغربي
mea: الحسانية
aao: الصحراوي
shu: التشادي

The proposals are assigned to sessions in https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:WikiIndaba_conference_2018/Accepted_submissions

Notifications to authors not having a scholarship should be done soon.

Categories added. Please remove from them the presentations that will not be presented in WikiIndaba conference 2018.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:WikiIndaba_conference_2018/Accepted_submissions

Example of the converter:
It-Tūnsī
It-Tūnsī huwwa il-dārja illī yitkallmūhā il-twānsa il-barra w fi- Tūnis[1]. Tkawwan il-lsān il-Tūnsī baģd mā t'aŧŧar il-earbī b- il-lūġāt illī kānit mawjūda fi- Tūnis qbal eām 673 kīmā il-būniyya[2], il-amāzīġiyya[3]… Il-cay hāđā baddal m- il-gṛammār mtāe il-lsān it-Tūnsī w xallāhā twallī beīda yāsir ea- il-Fuṣḥä[4]… Ic-cay illī xallä barca erab mā yifhmūc il-lsān it-Tūnsi w barca twānsa yilqāw il-fuṣḥä ṣeība barca[5]. Hađāka elāc emalnā Wīklam b- il-Tūnsī.

The source code is available here: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/P1876
The additional Latin Letters were inserted into a special layout for Tunisian for the AZERTY and QWERTY Keyboards.
The AZERTY Keyboard Layout for Windows is available here: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/F1371689
The QWERTY Keyboard Layout for Windows is available here: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/F1371794

The source code is available here: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/P1871

This is the source code of the converter:

<html lang="en"><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">

<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>Tunisian Arabic Script Converter</title>
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no">

All problems had been solved excepting the one of the Shaddah for punctation and numerals.
The Source code is: