Implementing Arabic-to-English Machine Translation Using the Role and Reference Grammar Linguistic Model

This paper presents work-in-progress investigating the development of a rule-based lexical framework for Arabic language processing using the Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) linguistic model. A system, called UniArab is introduced in this research to support the framework. The paper outlines the conceptual structure of UniArab System, which utilizes the framework and translates the Arabic language into another natural language. Also, this paper explores how the characteristics of the Arabic language will effect the development of a Machine Translation (MT) tool from Arabic to English. Several distinguishing features of Arabic pertinent to MT will be explored in detail with reference to some potential difficulties that they might present