Founding and mandate
The academy was established on 1 September 2020 by decision of the Council of Ministers, with its headquarters in Riyadh, its own legal personality, administrative autonomy and an independent budget. It is organisationally linked to the Minister of Culture, and its goals serve the Human Capability Development Program, one of the Vision 2030 programmes.
A board of trustees chaired by the Minister of Culture includes ten experts, appointed by order of the Prime Minister for three-year terms renewable once. A Secretary General runs the academy day to day.
What it does
Its objectives are to preserve the integrity of Arabic, promote the language and its culture and make it easier to learn, unify scholarly reference on Arabic, revive its heritage through research and publishing, and support specialists. Its output includes dictionaries, periodic reports on the state of Arabic, approved terminology for government agencies, and work in Arabisation and translation.
The academy works through four sectors: language policy and planning, computational linguistics including AI applications for Arabic, educational programmes such as proficiency tests, and cultural programmes. In 2022 it launched the Linguistic Consultant platform, which answers questions on spelling, grammar, morphology, rhetoric and literature free of charge.