George Kiraz
| George Anton Kiraz | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1965 (age 51–52) Bethlehem, West Bank |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Promoting Syriac heritage and literature |
George Anton Kiraz (Syriac: ܓܘܪܓܝ ܒܪ ܐܢܛܘܢ ܕܒܝܬ ܟܝܪܐܙ) (b. 1965) is an Syriac American syriacist, engineer and entrepreneur, best known for his contribution to modern Syriac studies.
George Kiraz was born in Bethlehem to a Syriac Orthodox merchants family which traces its roots back to Harput in Anatolia. He learned Syriac at the St. Mark's Monastery in Jerusalem and since he developed interest in this language. In 1983 he emigrated with his family to the United States where they settled in Los Angeles.
He holds numerous degrees including a B.Sc. degree in Engineering from California State University in 1990, a master's degree in Syriac Studies from Oxford University in 1991, a master's degree in Computer speech and Language processing, and a Ph.D. degree in Computational Linguistics from Cambridge University in 1992 and 1996 respectively.
In 1986 he designed the first computer fonts for Syriac and established a one-person company in Los Angeles named Alaph Beth Computer Systems for their distribution. He developed the proposal for encoding Syriac in Unicode (with Paul Nelson and Sargon Hasso) and designed the Unicode compliant Meltho fonts which enable Syriac computing on modern computers. His fonts are by far the most popular Computer Syriac fonts used in modern days.
He has been involved in Syriac related projects such as the co-founding of Gorgias Press, a publishing house dedicated to Syriac studies and other subjects in the humanities, and directing the institute of Beth Mardutho, which seeks to promote Syriac heritage and language. Between 1996 and 2000 he worked at Bell Labs as a Member of Technical Staff in the Language Modeling Group. Between 2000 and 2001 he was instrumental in opening an office for Nuance Communications on Wall Street, New York. His research interests include finite-state technology, computational morphology and phonology, and Syriac studies. He coined the term Garshunography to refer to the writing on one language in the script of another.
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