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This site-based study employed a sociolinguistic approach to investigate the linguistic landscape and multilingualism displayed on signs in Marib, a historical and tourist city in Yemen. The study focused on the types and functions of these signs, as well as people's perceptions of the status quo of the linguistic landscape.

A mixed-methods approach was used to collect data. Signs in tourist areas were photographed, and subsequent semi-structured interviews were conducted with relevant individuals to achieve the study's objectives.

The results revealed that both multilingual and monolingual signs coexist, with multilingual signs being more prevalent. Multilingual signs, which were official (top-down), served informational and symbolic functions, while monolingual signs, which were informal (bottom-up), served purely informational purposes. Bilingual signs were not present at the research sites. Interviewees generally expressed their satisfaction with multilingualism, as both national (Arabic and Musnad) and international (English) languages coexisted. However, they highlighted a deficiency in the number of signs at the research sites.

This study suggested intensifying efforts to include more signs, augmented with QR codes, to convey an appealing image of the linguistic landscape and provide visitors with information about these sites. Exposing students to the linguistic landscape can significantly enhance their English learning.

This study contributes to existing literature by providing further insights into the linguistic landscape in tourist destinations in Marib city. It offers the local and global community a better understanding of why and how the linguistic landscape should be improved and presented more appropriately.

This study investigates the potential effectiveness of ChatGPT in enhancing the academic writing skills of Saudi EFL undergraduate students. It also examines the challenges associated with its use and suggests effective ways to address them in the education sector.

The study employed a sequential mixed-methods approach, which involved distributing questionnaires to gather data from students, followed by conducting semi-structured interviews with a purposeful selection of eight students and six teachers.

The findings revealed that students were generally satisfied with the effectiveness of ChatGPT in enhancing their academic writing skills. However, they also pinpointed some challenges associated with using ChatGPT, including plagiarism, overreliance, inadequate documentation, threats to academic integrity, and inaccurate information. To alleviate these challenges, effective strategies include deploying detection tools, equipping students and educators with training sessions, and revisiting academic policies and assessment methods. It is recommended that ChatGPT be used responsibly as an assistant tool, in conjunction with students' ideas and teachers' feedback. This approach can significantly enhance students' writing skills and facilitate completing their research projects and assignments.

ChatGPT can be a valuable tool in the educational landscape, but it is essential to use it judiciously. Therefore, teachers' effective integration of ChatGPT into their classrooms can significantly enhance students' writing abilities and streamline their research process.

This study contributes to recent AI-based research and provides practical insights on the responsible integration of ChatGPT into education while addressing potential challenges.

The paper aims to enhance Arabic machine translation (MT) by proposing novel approaches: (1) a dimensionality reduction technique for word embeddings tailored for Arabic text, optimizing efficiency while retaining semantic information; (2) a comprehensive comparison of meta-embedding techniques to improve translation quality; and (3) a method leveraging self-attention and Gated CNNs to capture token dependencies, including temporal and hierarchical features within sentences, and interactions between different embedding types. These approaches collectively aim to enhance translation quality by combining different embedding schemes and leveraging advanced modeling techniques.

Recent works on MT in general and Arabic MT in particular often pick one type of word embedding model. In this paper, we present a novel approach to enhance Arabic MT by addressing three key aspects. Firstly, we propose a new dimensionality reduction technique for word embeddings, specifically tailored for Arabic text. This technique optimizes the efficiency of embeddings while retaining their semantic information. Secondly, we conduct an extensive comparison of different meta-embedding techniques, exploring the combination of static and contextual embeddings. Through this analysis, we identify the most effective approach to improve translation quality. Lastly, we introduce a novel method that leverages self-attention and Gated convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to capture token dependencies, including temporal and hierarchical features within sentences, as well as interactions between different types of embeddings. Our experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed approach in significantly enhancing Arabic MT performance. It outperforms baseline models with a BLEU score increase of 2 points and achieves superior results compared to state-of-the-art approaches, with an average improvement of 4.6 points across all evaluation metrics.

The proposed approaches significantly enhance Arabic MT performance. The dimensionality reduction technique improves the efficiency of word embeddings while preserving semantic information. Comprehensive comparison identifies effective meta-embedding techniques, with the contextualized dynamic meta-embeddings (CDME) model showcasing competitive results. Integration of Gated CNNs with the transformer model surpasses baseline performance, leveraging both architectures' strengths. Overall, these findings demonstrate substantial improvements in translation quality, with a BLEU score increase of 2 points and an average improvement of 4.6 points across all evaluation metrics, outperforming state-of-the-art approaches.

The paper’s originality lies in its departure from simply fine-tuning the transformer model for a specific task. Instead, it introduces modifications to the internal architecture of the transformer, integrating Gated CNNs to enhance translation performance. This departure from traditional fine-tuning approaches demonstrates a novel perspective on model enhancement, offering unique insights into improving translation quality without solely relying on pre-existing architectures. The originality in dimensionality reduction lies in the tailored approach for Arabic text. While dimensionality reduction techniques are not new, the paper introduces a specific method optimized for Arabic word embeddings. By employing independent component analysis (ICA) and a post-processing method, the paper effectively reduces the dimensionality of word embeddings while preserving semantic information which has not been investigated before especially for MT task.

Drawing primarily on the Japanese context, this study aims to highlight this setting to emphasise the potential for tertiary-level self-access language centres to develop lifelong global citizenship, self-reflection and cross-cultural collaboration.

This inquiry calls on the community of practice approach to account for the shared interests motivating lifelong cross-cultural participation, the quality of social engagement between actors, and the material and cognitive tools called upon to realise global citizenship’s shared enterprise.

As argued here, embracing various cultures and inclusive participation can lead to a broader understanding of global citizenship, avoiding narrow-minded views of globalism through shared knowledge and critical practices. Further, self-access provides a cost-effective, technology-mediated alternative to bilateral student mobility, whereby digital community-building occasions cross-cultural practice that may be extended throughout a learner’s life, irrespective of their financial status or place of study.

This study is one of a select few drawing on the community of practice framework within the context of lifelong global citizenship. Nevertheless, such an approach remains primed for future development. With a social constructivist philosophy in view, the authors suggest complementary qualitative research approaches that highlight the socially situated nature of both disciplines.

Much of the vocabulary of digital rights have not been translated into Kiswahili. This means that technology experts and digital rights defenders often use English words when they are discussing technology. This contributes to the frailty of efforts to defend digital rights because those who attempt to explain the importance of these issues to the broader societies are forced to rely on English vocabulary that is not rooted in or connected to Kiswahili contexts. This paper aims to discuss the importance of inviting people to use African languages on the internet.

Kiswahili is the most widely spoken African language in the world. Nearly 140 million people in East Africa speak Kiswahili as a first or second language, including in Kenya and Tanzania where it is the national language. There is a long history of Kiswahili writing, publishing and cultural production in Kiswahili. Kiswahili is also the only African language that is an official language at the African Union. Even so, Kiswahili lags behind significantly in the development of a vocabulary and grammar of technology.

Beyond vocabulary, the use of African languages online is important to strengthening democracy on the internet because language is keenly connected to identity. Efforts to translate the vocabulary of technology into Kiswahili are aimed at encouraging societies in East Africa to build communities online that represent their interests keenly. This article therefore looks at the importance of language in building society and the efforts by residents of East Africa to decolonise the internet, so that they are able to exist in their fullness on the internet. The article further examines the semiotics of language in digital innovation, and the importance of representing Kiswahili language communities properly online in efforts to decolonise the internet. This paper does not presume that Kiswahili is the only African language that can decolonise the internet, because even Kiswahili has a history of domination over other language communities in the region. Rather, the article uses the example of Kiswahili to urge the use of indigenous languages to defend digital diversity.

The importance of this article is in demonstrating the importance of language in the movement to develop digital rights and especially to remove colonial approaches to technology, an issue that, to the best of the author’s knowledge, has never been discussed in relation to the Kiswahili language.

For education systems to meet the demands of the knowledge economy and prepare their students to be adequately skilled for a more diversified economy in the Arabian Gulf, bold and innovative initiatives must be taken in order to ensure that these skills contribute towards a sustainable knowledge economy. Gulf states have been preparing for a transition towards, what the World Bank calls ‘a knowledge economy’ (World Bank, 2013) where economies will be run by the skills and knowledge capital of their workforce with technology and its advancement playing a central role. Many governments have identified the education sector as a site in which such ambitions can be met and have therefore introduced models of education where English is the medium of instruction. The rationale behind such a decision is based on multiple reasons, mainly because English is considered by some as the language of science and discovery (see Crystal, 2003).

In all discussions surrounding the overhaul of education systems and the United Nations’ (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) namely, goal number four (quality education), the notion of the language through which students learn is a neglected area of inquiry. English is increasingly becoming the language of instruction at the university and progressively at the school level too. This means that young students lose out on adequately learning their mother tongue. The chapter argues that only through forward, bold, and novel decisions to teach students in both Arabic and English can there be a guarantee of a more sustainable knowledge economy across the Gulf.