Arabic Automatic Speech Recognition: Challenges and Progress

This paper provides a structured examination of Arabic Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), focusing on the complexity posed by the language's diverse forms and dialectal variations. We first explore the Arabic language forms, delimiting the challenges encountered with Dialectal Arabic, including issues such as codeswitching and non-standardized orthography and, thus, the scarcity of large annotated datasets. Subsequently, we delve into the landscape of Arabic resources, distinguishing between Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Dialectal Arabic (DA) Speech Resources and highlighting the disparities in available data between these two categories. Finally, we analyze both traditional and modern approaches in Arabic ASR, assessing their effectiveness in addressing the unique challenges inherent to the language. Through this comprehensive examination, we aim to provide insights into the current state and future directions of Arabic ASR research and development.