By : Nelly All – Nahla Makled
Dr. Amr Talaat, Minister of Communications and Information Technology via Video Conferencing, witnessed the signing of an agreement between the Applied Innovation Center of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and the Chinese company iFLYTEK in implementing a research and development project in the field of natural language processing and machine translation using artificial intelligence technology.
The duration of the agreement is three years. It aims to achieve an Egyptian-Chinese cooperation to develop an Arabic-Chinese bilingual system using artificial intelligence technologies to provide solutions capable of understanding the Arabic language in the Egyptian vernacular dialect and its immediate translation into Chinese and vice versa. The project also contributes to providing 80 job opportunities for young people specialized in the fields of information technology, linguistics and translation .
The agreement was signed by Dr. / Ahmed Tantawi, supervisor of the Center for Applied Innovation, and Mr. Liu Junaho, deputy director of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence for the company "iFLY Tech"; In the presence of Mr. Mohamed Al-Badri, the Egyptian ambassador to China, Mr. Liao Licheng, the Chinese ambassador to Egypt, Engineer / Raafat Hindi, Deputy Minister of Communications and Information Technology for Infrastructure, and Eng. Jelestan Radwan, Advisor to the Minister of Communications and Information Technology for Artificial Intelligence, Dr. Hugh Yu, President of the Company IFlyTech, Mr. Dua Doye, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer and Director General of International Cooperation for iFly Tech, and a number of leaders from the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, the Center for Applied Innovation, and the Chinese iFlytek Company.
Dr. Amr Talaat, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, stressed that this agreement will contribute to the transfer of science and knowledge between the two ancient countries, Egypt and China, as the mirror of civilizations is considered to be reflected, documented and transmitted, explaining that the agreement mixes civilization and contemporary through cooperation at the highest scientific and technical level in the field of One of the most recent fields in the communications and information technology industry is the understanding of living languages, which is an important step towards building digital Egypt.
Dr. Amr Talaat added that this project is the nucleus of the projects of the Applied Innovation Center established by the Ministry; This represents a number crossing between the Arabic and Chinese languages, which will have an economic and social impact on all speakers in these two languages, which comes within the framework of the Egyptian government and the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology strategy to rebuild the Egyptian on the basis of civilization and science.
Mr. Mohamed Al-Badri, the Egyptian ambassador to China, stressed that there is a comprehensive strategic partnership between Egypt and China, noting the distinguished economic relations between those and witnessing investments by Chinese companies operating in Egypt in a diligent and distinct manner; Stressing that this agreement will have a pivotal role in advancing Egyptian and Chinese relations, as it contributes to making the Egyptian and Chinese citizens in contact.
Mr. Liao Licheng, Chinese Ambassador to Egypt, stressed the depth of Egyptian-Chinese relations. Expressing his happiness for this cooperation in the field of artificial intelligence, which will have future effects in serving the common interests, that it will provide a quarter of the world's Arab and Chinese speakers with an important bridge for communication, and he praised the efforts that the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology requires to achieve digital transformation in all sectors.
Dr. Ahmed Tantawi, supervisor of the Center for Applied Innovation at the center presented to developing solutions in the field of emerging technologies and building the capabilities of young people in the fields of information technology, pointed out the project that will be implemented in cooperation between the center and the Chinese company "iFlyTech" provided to build a translation system from Chinese to Arabic and vice versa.
Dr. Huo Yu, president of "i-Fly Tech" company, receives his happiness by signing this strategic cooperation between the company and the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, which represents an important step in joint cooperation, pointing to the company's fields of work in using artificial intelligence to provide solutions in the field of natural language processing Mechanism, speech recognition techniques, etc., topics that the cooperation project will contribute to achieving communication between China and Arab countries.
This supports iFlytek, one of the leading Chinese companies engaged in smart voice and speech technologies, artificial intelligence technology and research, integrated circuit product development and e-government integration.
