The document discusses the challenges of improving accessibility to archived raster dictionaries for complex script languages, focusing on Urdu and Arabic. It outlines issues related to collation, indexing, and user contribution in creating a multi-lingual dictionary explorer. Future efforts aim to address existing problems and enhance the indexing process.

1. Improving Accessibility of
Archived Raster Dictionaries of
Complex Script Languages
Computer Science Department, Old Dominion University
Norfolk, Virginia - 23529
Sawood Alam
National University of Sciences and Technology
Islamabad, Pakistan
Fateh ud din B Mehmood
Computer Science Department, Old Dominion University
Norfolk, Virginia - 23529
Michael L. Nelson

2. The Time Travel

3. OK Google, Define Dictionary
a book or electronic resource that lists
the words of a language (typically in
alphabetical order) and gives their
meaning, or gives the equivalent words
in a different language, often also
providing information about
pronunciation, origin, and usage.

4. Dictionaries Are Different
Read: random access
Write: maintain sort order
The most compact mode to
preserve a language

5. Problem: English Dictionary
Johnson's English dictionary

6. Problem: Urdu Dictionary
Farhang-e-Asifiyah

7. Related Work

8. Unicode Collation
Ordered assembly of written information
Unicode values != natural collation
Arabic script: U+0600 to U+06FF
Out of order alphabets in derived languages
Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR)

9. Collation Discrepancies
Compound letters
Diacritical marks
Half letters
Prefixes

10. Nested Ordering
Root word sorting (Arabic)
Morphological derivation
Derived word simplification
Radicals and strokes (Chinese)

11. Indexing: Ordered Pages

12. Indexing: Sparse Index

13. Indexing: Full Index

14. Indexing: Location Index

15. Indexing State Transition

16. Annotation

17. Digitization

18. Dictionary Explorer
Multilingual Multi-dictionary Lookup
Searching and Exploring
Annotation and digitization
User Contribution and Feedback
Open Source => GitHub:/urduweb/DictionaryExplorer

19. Dictionary Explorer: English
Dictionary Explorer: English

20. Dictionary Explorer: Urdu
Dictionary Explorer: Urdu

21. Indexing Time
Dictionary Pages Index Mode Time
English to
Urdu
180 Sparse Manual and
Script
10
minutes
Monolingual
Urdu
2,500 Sparse Manual 2 hours
Monolingual
Classic Urdu
3,200 Full* Crowdsource** 60 days
* 75,000 words, phrases, proverbs, and idioms
** 13 contributors

22. Prefix Permutations

23. Prefix: One

24. Prefix: Two

25. Prefix: Three

26. Prefix: Four

27. Prefix: Five

28. Prefix: Six

29. Conclusions and Future Work
Identified issues
Too many matches
Lack of fielded searching
Lack of OCR support
No input method assistance
Collation chalanges
Accessibility levels: Ordered Pages, Sparse, Full, and
Location indexes, annotation, and digitization
Implemented a multi-lingual multi-dictionary explorer
Effort and prefix evaluation
In future: elastic index and automatic region estimste
GitHub:/urduweb/DictionaryExplorer

30. Sawood Alam
@ibnesayeed