Abu Dhabi to digitise 100,000 Arabic books in push to strengthen language online

The UAE is stepping up efforts to bring Arabic literature into the digital age, with the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre partnering with Amazon to digitise 100,000 Arabic books over the coming years.

Dr Ali bin Tmeem, chairman of the centre, said the initiative, called the Arabic Library, has already digitised 42,000 books, with the number expected to reach 62,000 by next year.

Speaking during a dialogue session in Abu Dhabi, bin Tmeem said the emirate aims to “change the book and reading industry” while helping drive technological development for the Arabic language.

The push comes amid concerns over Arabic's limited presence in the digital and artificial intelligence landscape.

Bin Tmeem said Arabic accounts for only about 1 per cent of the data used to train major large language models. He said Arabic text is often processed through intermediary languages before being analysed, which can alter meanings and influence how the Arab world is understood globally.

He linked the gap to findings from a 10-country regional survey, "Congress Pulse," which found that while 91 per cent of young people use Arabic at home, only 64 per cent use it at work or school, and 77 per cent see English as essential to achieving their goals. Half of respondents called for greater investment in Arabic within technology and artificial intelligence.

He said initiatives such as the Arabic Library and the "Sama" exam, a proficiency test developed with the Institut du Monde Arabe, were designed to help close that gap — a challenge he said other countries have faced with their own languages.

France's experience offers one example of how governments can support local-language content.

Anne-Claire Legendre, president of the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, said French regulations require streaming platforms such as Netflix to ensure that 20 to 25 per cent of their film and series catalogues are French-produced. Earlier quotas also required cinemas to dedicate at least 40 per cent of their screenings to French films.

Legendre also highlighted the scale of opportunity in Arabic content, noting a 300 per cent growth in Arabic-language TV series driven by demand across the Mena region's roughly 450 million speakers. But she said that growth was not being fully captured, as the market remained fragmented: regulations vary by country, books are difficult to distribute across borders, funding for animation and film is limited, and piracy remains widespread.

Professor Roberto Tottoli, president of the University of Naples L'Orientale, drew on his own institution's experience to argue that language demand can be deliberately cultivated. He said interest in Korean at his university had grown from just five students a year fifteen years ago to hundreds today, driven by sustained political investment and cultural diffusion.

He suggested a similar cultural wave could be built around Arabic, pointing out that Hollywood already draws heavily on Islamic and Arabic imagery to depict mystery and the esoteric, often without crediting the source. Presenting that imagination through Arabic content itself, he said, could help drive the kind of global diffusion Korean culture achieved through K-pop.

The remarks came during a dialogue session held as part of the Congress of Arabic and Creative Industries, at Manarat Al Saadiyat in Abu Dhabi on September 20, 2026.

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