Enhancing Language Learning through Technology: Introducing a New English-Azerbaijani (Arabic Script) Parallel Corpus

Abstract

This paper introduces a pioneering English-Azerbaijani (Arabic Script) parallel corpus, designed to bridge the technological gap in language learning and machine translation (MT) for under-resourced languages. Consisting of 548,000 parallel sentences and approximately 9 million words per language, this dataset is derived from diverse sources such as news articles and holy texts, aiming to enhance natural language processing (NLP) applications and language education technology. This corpus marks a significant step forward in the realm of linguistic resources, particularly for Turkic languages, which have lagged in the neural machine translation (NMT) revolution. By presenting the first comprehensive case study for the English-Azerbaijani (Arabic Script) language pair, this work underscores the transformative potential of NMT in low-resource contexts. The development and utilization of this corpus not only facilitate the advancement of machine translation systems tailored for specific linguistic needs but also promote inclusive language learning through technology. The findings demonstrate the corpus's effectiveness in training deep learning MT systems and underscore its role as an essential asset for researchers and educators aiming to foster bilingual education and multilingual communication. This research covers the way for future explorations into NMT applications for languages lacking substantial digital resources, thereby enhancing global language education frameworks. The Python package of our code is available at https://pypi.org/project/chevir-kartalol/, and we also have a website accessible at https://translate.kartalol.com/.