ARABIC LANGUAGE · DATA · EVALUATION

Abdessamad Nafissi

Arabic Computational Linguist
& AI Language Engineer

I work on Arabic speech and text data, linguistic annotation, model evaluation, and data quality across Modern Standard Arabic and Moroccan Arabic. I combine linguistic analysis with Python, SQL, and regex to build reliable language-data workflows.

Try the Arabizi demo
Abdessamad Nafissi
Credentials

Verified Credentials & Coursework

About Me

Linguistic judgment. Reliable language data.

Arabic expertise grounded in multilingual language work and applied AI evaluation.

I’m a native Arabic speaker with a background in translation and linguistics and professional experience evaluating multilingual AI data. My work spans Modern Standard Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, and North African dialect variation, including phonetics, morphology, diacritics, semantic ambiguity, and code-switching.

At Meta through TEKsystems and Apple through Appen, I worked on language-data quality, annotation, and model-output evaluation. I use Python, SQL, and regular expressions to extract, filter, and validate data, and apply linguistic judgment to ambiguous cases and annotation guidelines.

My independent research examines Moroccan Arabizi de-romanization through automatic metrics, native-speaker audits, and error analysis. Earlier translation and proofreading work across Arabic, French, and English continues to inform how I assess meaning, context, and language quality.

Arabic
Native language expertise
MSA · Moroccan Arabic · dialect variation
3
Working languages
Arabic · English · French
Speech + Text
Language-data evaluation
Annotation · adjudication · quality review
ICALP 2026
Camera-ready submitted
Final confirmation pending
Skills & Practice

Language expertise, applied.

The capabilities I bring to language-data teams and independent NLP research.

Arabic Linguistics

  • Modern Standard Arabic & Moroccan Arabic
  • North African dialect variation
  • Phonetics & phonology
  • Morphology, diacritics & code-switching

Applied in Arabic language-data evaluation and linguistic error analysis.

Speech & Text Evaluation

  • Speech/audio data & transcription validation
  • LLM output & training-data evaluation
  • Annotation, adjudication & golden datasets
  • ASR/TTS data quality & guideline refinement

Experience with Siri speech/text data and Arabic AI evaluation workflows.

Data & NLP Tools

  • Python, pandas & SQL
  • Regular expressions & data validation
  • PyTorch & Hugging Face
  • Model benchmarking & error analysis

Used in quality workflows and the four-system de-romanization study.

Multilingual Work

  • Arabic: native
  • English: fluent / native-level
  • French: fluent / professional
  • Translation, proofreading & localization

Professional language work across documents, documentaries, software, and games.

Experience & Education

My Professional Journey

From multilingual language work to Arabic AI data and evaluation.

Experience

Oct 2024 – Apr 2026

AI Language Engineer

Meta · through TEKsystems · Remote, FL

Built and evaluated Arabic training and evaluation datasets across MSA and dialects. Created, reviewed, and adjudicated annotations and golden datasets. Used Python, SQL, regex, tools, and APIs for extraction and quality checks, and provided feedback on guidelines, prompts, and evaluation metrics.

Jan 2022 – Aug 2023

Senior Data Linguist

Apple · through Appen · Richardson, TX

Evaluated speech and text language data for Siri command applications. Reviewed model-generated responses for meaning, wording, context, and consistency, applying phonetics, syntax, semantics, and morphology to annotation and quality review.

May 2021 – Dec 2021

Data Linguist

Apple · through Appen · Richardson, TX

Reviewed language and search data for accuracy, usefulness, relevance, and contextual interpretation. Collaborated with team members to resolve ambiguous content and quality issues.

Apr 2012 – May 2021

Senior Translator / Proofreader

Freelance · Remote

Translated and proofread French, English, and Arabic content for clients including VICE/HBO and Sensata Technologies. Work spanned documents, documentaries, localization, and video games, with research into slang, idioms, and specialized terminology.

Past translation work & client reviews on Smartcat

Education

Oct 2021 – Oct 2024

Self-taught NLP Engineering

Online study & applied projects

Studied linear algebra, statistical modeling, NLP, NLU, and Transformers. Developed and applied a custom NLP pipeline for sentiment analysis.

Completed Jun 2013

Master of Arts · Fundamentals of Translation & Linguistics

Translation & Linguistic Studies · Casablanca, Morocco

Advanced study in linguistics, audiovisual translation, digital-content localization, and translation project management, with analysis of morphological, syntactic, semantic, and contextual challenges.

Completed Jun 2011

Bachelor of Arts · English Literature & Applied Linguistics

University Hassan II · Mohammedia, Morocco

Study of phonetics, syntax, semantics, sociolinguistics, and practical applications of linguistic theory.

My Portfolio

Featured Research & Projects

Research, language tooling, and multilingual contributions.

Moroccan Arabizi Research Breaking the
Script Barrier
Rules · MLE · LSTM · mT5 Full manuscript coming soon
Accepted for camera-ready · ICALP 2026De-romanizationArabizi

Breaking the Script Barrier

Automatic De-Romanization of Maghribi Arabizi to Arabic Script in Social Media

An empirical benchmark comparing an ordered rule mapper, MLE word mapping with regex fallback, a word-level character LSTM, and a full-passage mT5-small Transformer on the same 805-passage test set. Native-speaker audits and linguistic error analysis examine reference quality, alignment noise, and dialectal variation.

No single system leads on every metric. mT5 has the highest observed BLEU; MLE has the strongest character- and word-level form fidelity.

Accepted for camera-ready at the 9th International Conference on Arabic Language Processing. The revised manuscript has been submitted; final confirmation is pending. The full manuscript will be shared after confirmation. Code and aggregate-artifact access is available on request.

Four-system benchmark

Frozen 805-passage test set · higher BLEU, chrF, and PosEM are better; lower CER and WER are better.
SystemBLEU ↑chrF ↑CER % ↓WER % ↓PosEM % ↑
Rule mapper7.2446.7324.5072.508.69
MLE + regex35.4469.6015.1742.4816.76
Word LSTM9.6251.9844.9469.009.42
mT5-small36.7568.8642.8664.0321.54

PosEM measures position-wise token agreement. Bold values mark the best observed score in each column. The mT5–MLE BLEU difference is 1.31 points (95% paired-bootstrap interval: −0.55 to 3.24; p = 0.074), which does not establish superiority at the 0.05 level or equivalence.

Dataset, human audits & interpretation

Dataset: 8,045 passage pairs from UBC-NLP / NileChat Arabizi-Morocco, split into 6,436 training, 804 validation, and 805 test pairs. Its Arabizi was generated from Arabic-script Moroccan material with Command R+; performance on naturally authored Arabizi remains untested. Source data is subject to upstream access conditions and CC BY-NC 4.0.

Human audits: two native Moroccan Arabic speakers independently accepted all 300 sampled test references. All-positive labels make Cohen’s κ undefined. A separate 100-pair audit found 75 aligned and 25 misaligned positional training pairs. Review of 50 apparent LSTM errors yielded 42 true errors, 5 acceptable variants/non-errors, and 3 uncertain cases; this error-conditioned sample is not an accuracy estimate.

Interpretation: mT5 uses full passages, external pretraining, and more eligible training data than the word-level systems. This is not an architecture-controlled comparison. All 78 mT5 outputs that failed to emit EOS within the generation limit remain in the primary scores. Split provenance and source-document independence retain limitations described in the manuscript. The exploratory human mT5–MLE review does not establish a human-preference winner.

Python Jupyter Notebook Data Cleaning Social Media NLP

Social Media Text Preprocessing & Sentiment Analysis

An educational Python notebook exploring URL removal, custom emoji-to-text mappings, English-oriented normalization, and TextBlob sentiment scoring. Word clouds and label counts help inspect the processed sample; the project does not claim benchmarked classification accuracy.

Research Sandbox

Arabizi De-romanization

Explore an interactive MLE + regex demonstration for Moroccan Arabizi (Darija).

Interactive MLE + regex demonstration

Arabizi uses Latin letters and numerals to write Arabic dialects. This demo converts Moroccan Darija into Arabic script while retaining dialectal words; it does not translate them into Modern Standard Arabic.

The browser checks a dictionary for a word mapping, then applies ordered regex rules to unfamiliar words. The token breakdown shows which path produced each output.

What you can explore

  • Dictionary mappings and fallback rules
  • Numerals used as Arabizi letters
  • Preservation of standalone numbers, dates, and times

This browser adaptation uses a bundled mapping dictionary with built-in example mappings. It has not been validated as an exact reproduction of the paper’s MLE system. The LSTM and mT5 models are evaluated in the manuscript and do not run here.

Explore the four-system research results
MLE + regex demo

Loading mapping dictionary…

Test Examples
Try a short Moroccan Darija phrase. Up to 2,000 characters.
Applying dictionary mappings and fallback rules...
Get in Touch

Start a Conversation

Interested in Arabic speech and text evaluation, language-data quality, or NLP research? Let’s connect.

Location

Tampa Bay Area, FL

Connect Internationally

For open-source developments, resume deep-dives, or professional network inquiries, find me on these networks.