Serageldin Gives keynote Speech on the Dialogue of Civilization
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Alexandria—As one of twelve internationally renowned scholars and policy makers making up the board members of the Universal Networking Digital Language Foundation (UNDL), Dr. Ismail Serageldin, Director of the Library of Alexandria, attended the 9th Board Meeting convened at the Arab Fund For Economic and Social Development headquarters in Kuwait on 26 October 2009.
On the occasion of the meeting, an International Symposium on the Universal Networking Language (UNL) was also held at the University of Kuwait, where Serageldin gave a keynote speech entitled “The Dialogue of Civilization Today: Cultural and Technical Challenges”. Following the speech, a roundtable discussion on the UNL as a bridge to the dialogue of civilizations took place.
The UNL is an artificial language attempting to replicate the functions of natural languages in knowledge dissemination through the internet. The UNL program was initiated by the United Nations and devised by UNDL Foundation, to address the obstacle of linguistic diversity among nations. It is considered a new technique towards bridging the linguistic gap among civilizations through enabling people to generate information and have access to cultural knowledge in their native languages.
So far, there are 15 languages involved in the program. The BA hosts the Ibrahim Shehata Arabic-UNL Center (ISAUC) which plays the major role in designing and implementing the Arabic component in the development of this language.