The CSPA  conference series is dedicated to promoting the practice of science in general, and computer science in particular, in the Arabic language.  At a time when all modern languages evolve through a constant flow of linguistic material from the scientific field to the technical field to everyday practice,  Arabic is in danger of becoming obsolete unless such a flow is created.  Arabic speaking scholars  have a unique role to play in this process, by practicing their profession in the Arabic language.  The ultimate goal of our effort, to make Arabic an adequate medium for scientific communication, and, in time, scientific discovery, can only be reached through intense cooperation between domain experts, linguists, and translation experts.

CSPA 2008 is the fourth conference in the CSPA series:  The first conference was held in Tunis, Tunisia, in July 2003; the second was held in Cairo, Egypt, in January 2005; and the third was held in Sharjah, Dubai, in March 2006; the proceedings of these conferences are published by Phillips Publishing (www.phillips-publishing.com).   This series has met with increasing success, in terms of attendance, submissions, and impact.  The goal of CSPA 2008 is to build on the success of previous conferences to increase the momentum of scientific publishing in Arabic.  Specifically, we wish to provide an opportunity for computer science scholars, researchers, educators and practitioners interested in using  Arabic as a communication medium to expose their ideas, opinions, and research results.   Also, we wish to broaden the scope of the conference by encouraging other scholars interested in the topic of the conference (linguists, translation scholars, etc) to share their perspectives, insights, or experiences.