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A Web-Based Communication Tool for Arabic-Speaking Newcomers to Canada

Authors:
Fatma Ben Mesmia
Malek Mouhoub

Keywords: Communication aid; Pictogram; Audio-visual strategy; Multilingual ontology; NLP

Abstract:
The development of a communication aid tool for Non-English-Speaking newcomers to Canada is very important for their integration, self-reliance and contribution to the new society. Such a tool will indeed overcome the language barriers that the newcomers might be challenged with, which will ease their struggle in their first days in a foreign country. Following on a previous work extending the Pictopages software to address these challenges for the Arabic-speaking new comers to Saskatchewan, Canada, we propose a new web-based communication tool relying on a multilingual ontology. More precisely, the multilingual ontology is used to structure items, extracted automatically from Wikipedia via a Natural Language Processing (NLP) module. Our proposed communication tool allows newcomers to communicate and to interact with the target community via audio, text and visual symbols. In this regard, the tool includes several functionalities, such as a multilingual automatic speech-to-speech translation, localization via Google Maps web mapping service, and important information and resources for newcomers. The latter are well-organized in a hierarchical manner, thanks to our proposed multilingual ontology.

Pages: 40 to 47

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2021

Publication date: July 18, 2021

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4138

ISBN: 978-1-61208-870-9

Location: Nice, France

Dates: from July 18, 2021 to July 22, 2021