Classical to slang conversion for retrieving Arabic documents using slang queries

Abstract

In the Arabic world, people speak two languages fluently: classical Arabic and slang Arabic. Being able to use slang Arabic terms in Web search queries will be considered a huge leap in modern research on Arabic information retrieval. It would be more comfortable to Arab Web users to obtain the required information available on the Web using slang Arabic queries. This research paper completes the work that was started a year ago in which the ultimate goal of this ongoing project is to design and build a system that is fully capable of replacing Arabic slang-based queries with their equivalent classical terms. The work that has been done in this paper aims to simplify the task for Arab Web users via enabling them to use their slang Arabic to make Web queries. This work provides promising results and shows that people who do not know how to write classical queries can use their slang language directly. © The Author(s) 2014.