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Mohammed Al-Sharekh

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Mohammed Al-Sharekh
محمد الشارخ
Born1942 (1942)
Kuwait City, Kuwait
Died (aged 81)
Other namesAbu Fahd
Alma mater
Occupation(s)Businessperson, writer
Years active1969–2024
Known forMSX Sakhr
Children4, including Fahad and Alanoud

Mohammed Al-Sharekh (Arabic: محمد الشارخ; 1942 – 6 March 2024) was a Kuwaiti businessman and author, who was the founder and Chairman Emeritus of Sakhr Software Company. Through Sakhr, he introduced the first Arabic language operating system into computers.[1]

Background

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Al-Sharekh was born in Kuwait in 1942.[2] He earned his bachelor's degree in economics and political science from Cairo University in 1965,[3] and his master's degree in development economics in 1968 from Williams College in Massachusetts, United States.[4]

Al-Sharekh died on 6 March 2024, at the age of 81.[5][6][7]

Career

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Al-Sharekh served as the Deputy Director-General for the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development from 1969 to 1973, as a representative of Kuwait and Arab Group of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (I.B.R.D), Washington D.C. from 1973 to 1975 and co-founded and chaired the Board of Directors of the Industrial Bank of Kuwait,[8] he also served as Vice Chairman of the Association of Arab Economists.[9] In 1980, he founded AlAlamiah Group with headquarters in Kuwait and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and established Sakhr Software Company as a project to introduce the Arabic language into computers in 1982.[4] Upon that, they worked on the research and development of Arabic NLP (Natural Language Processing) which led to the development of the Arabic OCR, Arabic machine translation, and Arabic automatic speech recognition.[10] In 1997, Al-Sharekh founded Book in a Newspaper project in collaboration with UNESCO.[8] In 1987, he was one of the financiers of the Center for Arab Unity Studies and the Arab Organization for Translation, and the Institut du Monde Arabe in 1987.[11] Al-Sharekh developed the first Quran computer software, in addition to the nine Hadith books software in English,[12][4] the Islamic Information Archive,[13] OCR in 1994, Arabic Text to Speech in 1998, Machine translation from and into Arabic in 2002,[14][15] automatic speech translation in 2010[16][17] and developing more than 90 educational and coding programs for the Arab youth.[9]

Sakhr Software Company

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In 1982, Al-Sharekh established Sakhr Software Company as a Kuwaiti subsidiary of AlAlamiah Group, which moved its headquarters to Cairo during the invasion of Kuwait in 1990.[18] The company developed a new generation of Arabic Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques that were used in the development of automated morphology and automatic diacritizer which took over 10 years for completion.[19] The company obtained three patents from the USPTO in the field of Arabic language for automatic pronunciation, automatic translation and OCR.[11][20][21][22]

Contemporary Arabic Lexicon

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Contemporary Arabic Lexicon is a contemporary computerized dictionary of the Arabic language, which was released online for free in 2019, contains 125,000 meanings and structures, as well as a database amounting to 35,000 synonyms and antonyms. The website also includes three dictionaries which are Al-Qāmus al-Muḥīṭ, Taj al-Arus and Lisān al-ʿArab.[23][24]

AlSharekh Archives

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The archive consists of 250 magazines with 13,000 issues that were issued from the late 19th century until 2010.[24][25] It also includes more than 250,000 articles of various topics by 20,000 writers from Arab and non-Arab countries.[11][26][27]

Biopic

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In Katara Studios has announced a biopic titled "Sakhr," focusing on the late Kuwaiti entrepreneur. The film aims to celebrate Al-Sharekh's significant contributions to Arabic computing and technology, highlighting his legacy in a region where most software was originally designed for English speakers.[28]

Patents

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During his tenure, Sakhr Software Company obtained three patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office:

  • Arabic handwriting recognition using feature matching.[20]
  • Determining a compact model to transcribe the Arabic language acoustically in a well defined basic phonetic study.[22]
  • Method and system for theme-based word sense ambiguity reduction.[21]

Achievements and awards

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Private holdings

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Al-Sharekh had many private holdings that consisted of paintings from Arabian and Egyptian art by several well-known Arab and non-Arab artists; according to the Kuwaiti newspaper, Al-Jarida, his art collection is sufficient to establish a private museum.[35][36][37]

Published works

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In 1968, Al-Sharekh published his first work, "Qais and Laila", in the avant-garde 1960s magazine Gallery[38] and had three published short stories, Ten Stories published in 2006, Al-Saha published in 2012, and Secrets published in 2017, and a novel entitled The Family published in 2018.[24][39]

References

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  1. ^ a b "Mohammed Al-Sharekh receives major award at Arab Technology Awards". AME Info: Middle East & Gulf News (AMEinfo.com). 8 October 2005. Archived from the original (web.archive.org) on 6 October 2012. Retrieved 9 March 2024.
  2. ^ "الصفحة الرئيسية".
  3. ^ ""صخر"... علامة التقنية العربية تعود للحاضر بتكريم عالمي". الشرق الأوسط (in Arabic). Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  4. ^ a b c d ""الشارخ" التكنولوجي العربي الذي لا يعرفه أحد". CNBC (in Arabic). Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  5. ^ وفاة الكويتي محمد الشارخ أول من أدخل اللغة العربية إلى الكمبيوتر (in Arabic)
  6. ^ Joudah, Ghadi (7 March 2024). "Arabic software pioneer Mohammed Al-Sharekh dies". Arab News. Retrieved 9 March 2024.
  7. ^ "Noted Kuwaiti entrepreneur and author Mohamed al-Sharekh passes away". Gulf Times. 6 March 2024. Retrieved 9 March 2024.
  8. ^ a b "سمير عطا الله – قصص محمد الشارخ". الشرق الأوسط (in Arabic). Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  9. ^ a b "محمد بن عبد الرحمان الشارخ.... تعرف على الكويتي الفائز بجائزة الملك فيصل المرموقة". جريدة برواز الإلكترونية (in Arabic). 2 March 2021. Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  10. ^ a b "King Faisal Prize | Mr. Mohamed bin Abdulrahman Al-Sharekh". Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  11. ^ a b c "محمد الشارخ.. العقل الذي كشف أسرار الكونية أمام اللغة العربية | مجلة الفيصل" (in Arabic). Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  12. ^ a b c "محمد الشارخ المواطن الكويتي الذي أجبر الكمبيوتر على التحدث بلغتنا ضعف تدريس اللغة العربية يجعلها صعبة على الطلبة". alanba.com.kw (in Arabic). Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  13. ^ ""أرشيف الشارخ" للمجلات الأدبية والثقافية العربية في حلة جديدة". MEO (in Arabic). 25 May 2021. Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  14. ^ a b "تقديراً لانجازاته في مجال صناعة البرامج العربية، محمد الشارخ يفوز بجائزة «صاحب الرؤية الالكترونية» للعام 2002". www.albayan.ae (in Arabic). 17 October 2002. Retrieved 12 September 2021.
  15. ^ "Al-jazirah". www.al-jazirah.com. Retrieved 12 September 2021.
  16. ^ "أعيدوا لنا الشارخ". alqabas.
  17. ^ "MENAFN – Middle East North Africa . Financial Network". 3 September 2014. Archived from the original on 3 September 2014. Retrieved 12 September 2021.
  18. ^ "Sakhr launches Arabic ASR 4.0 speech recognition engine".
  19. ^ "شركة صخر الكويتية: أنجزنا المعجم الحديث وسنطلقه في يناير المقبل".
  20. ^ a b US 7142715, Fahmy, Hesham Osman Mahmoud & Elrayan, Samah Mohamed, "Arabic handwriting recognition using feature matching", published 2006-11-28, assigned to Sakhr Software Company 
  21. ^ a b US 7184948, Chalabi, Achraf, "Method and system for theme-based word sense ambiguity reduction", published 2007-02-27, assigned to Sakhr Software Company 
  22. ^ a b US 7107215, Ghali, Mikhail E., "Determining a compact model to transcribe the Arabic language acoustically in a well defined basic phonetic study", published 2006-09-12, assigned to Sakhr Software Company 
  23. ^ ""صخر" تطرح المعجم الحديث في يناير المقبل". www.aljarida.com (in Arabic). 19 December 2019. Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  24. ^ a b c المدني, بقلم: د عبدالله (14 September 2019). "محمد الشارخ.. رائد تعريب الحوسبة". www.albayan.ae (in Arabic). Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  25. ^ "مجلات العقود الخوالي.. متاحة للباحثين". arb.majalla.com (in Arabic). Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  26. ^ "أرشيف المجلات الثقافية العربية.. كنز رقمي لثروة معرفية ورقية". العين الإخبارية (in Arabic). 30 July 2018. Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  27. ^ "حصاد : الشارخ يطلق نسخة جديدة من "أرشيف المجلات الثقافية والأدبية"". www.aljarida.com (in Arabic). 13 January 2020. Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  28. ^ Szalai, Georg (7 December 2024). "Arabic Tech Pioneer, Sakhr Founder Biopic in the Works at Katara Studios (Exclusive)". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 9 December 2024.
  29. ^ "بالفيديو الفائزون بـ التقديرية والتشجيعية جائزة الدولة تقدير لعطاءاتنا". alanba.com.kw (in Arabic). Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  30. ^ "Sakhr wins UN Award for accessibility software".
  31. ^ "مؤسس شركة صخر ورئيس مجلس إدارتها يتسلم جائزة القمة العالمية لمجتمع المعلومات". archive.aawsat.com. Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  32. ^ "بعد فوز شركة صخر بجائزة القمة العالمية لمجتمع المعلومات الشارخ يفوز بجائزة تقديرية ضمن جوائز التقنية العربية". جريدة القبس. 8 October 2005. Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  33. ^ "محمد الشارخ يتسلم جائزة الرواد من مؤسسة الفكر العربي". صحيفة الوسط البحرينية (in Arabic). Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  34. ^ "محمد الشارخ مؤسس شركة صخر العالمية يفوز بجائزة "صاحب الرؤية الإلكترونية" للعام 2002". alriyadh.com. 4 March 2016. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  35. ^ "مجموعة الشارخ الفنية".
  36. ^ "مجلة العربي تحتفي بالمرأة المبدعة". www.aljarida.com (in Arabic). 3 July 2017. Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  37. ^ "عن محمد الشارخ الظالم نفسه". www.aljarida.com (in Arabic). 30 August 2018. Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  38. ^ "الشارخ يجنح إلى المفارقة والمفاجأة في أسرار وقصص أخرى". aljarida.com. 5 September 2016. Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  39. ^ "أسرار وقصص أخرى مجموعة قصصية جديدة للكاتب محمد الشارخ". alanba.com.kw (in Arabic). Retrieved 28 September 2021.
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