The Arabization Coordination Bureau, a subsidiary institution of the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (ALECSO), organized, on October 27, 2020, a specialized webinar, via Microsoft Teams, on the “Dictionary of COVID-19 Terms” in its updated and revised edition, with the participation of prominent medical and linguistic experts and specialists.
In an opening statement, H.E. Dr. Mohamed Ould Amar, Director-General of ALECSO, pointed out that the Organization has launched several initiatives in response to the COVID-19 crisis, in addition to developing a platform for Arab open educational resources, designed to diversify learning methods in the Arab countries. In the same context, he added, the Smart Learning Institute of Beijing Norma University (SLIBNU), in collaboration with ALECSO, prepared an online multi-Language series (in Chinese, English, Arabic and French) to help people protect themselves from the Coronavirus.
On the other hand, Dr. Ould Amar commended the issuing, by the Arabization Coordination Bureau, of the “Unified Dictionary of Internal Medicine Terms” in a digital version. These specialized dictionaries, he maintained, are part of ALECSO’s projects designed to promote the Arabization of scientific and technical terms.
Participants in the Webinar highlighted the importance of these dictionaries. They stressed the need to create a network of relevant experts and specialists, and to make dictionaries interactive and open to continuous revision and updating.
The webinar concluded that the promotion of Arabic is a collective responsibility, and that lexical research is an efficient tool for achieving linguistic development and for keeping pace with modern knowledge through the translation and Arabization of scientific, technical and cultural terms.
