language technology for multilingual europe

Co-funded by the 7th Framework Programme and the ICT Policy Support Programme of the European Commission through the contracts T4ME, CESAR, METANET4U, META-NORD (grant agreements no. 249119, 271022, 270893, 270899).

Language Technology for Multilingual Europe

Georg Rehm

Network Manager META-NET German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Germany

[email protected]

EFNIL 10th Annual Conference – Budapest, Hungary

October 25, 2012

Multilingual Europe

2 http://www.meta-net.eu

q  Challenge: to provide each language community with the most advanced technologies for communication and information so that maintaining their mother tongue does not turn into a disadvantage.

q  All stakeholders – researchers, LT user and provider industries, language communities, funding programmes, policy makers – should team up for a major dedicated push.

q  META-NET is a network of excellence dedicated to fostering the technological foundations of the European multilingual information society.

q  META-NET in October 2012: 60 members in 34 countries.

q  Supported through a total of four EU-funded projects.

META-SHARE

http://www.meta-net.eu 3

q  Open exchange infrastructure for language resources and tools.

q  Language resources and tools are documented, uploaded, stored in repositories, catalogued, can be downloaded, shared, discussed.

q  Improve their visibility, documentation, availability, preservation, interoperability.

q  Goal: boost research, technology and innovation through pooling, openness and sharing of resources.

q  1.300+ LRs available in 13 repositories.

http://www.meta-share.eu

Language White Papers


q  Reports on the state of our languages in the digital age and the level of support through language technology.

q  Series covers 30 languages. q  Communication instruments to address

decision makers and journalists. q  >2 years in the making. q  >200 national experts as contributors. q  >8.000 copies printed and distributed

to politicians and journalists.

MT


English

good

French, Spanish

moderate fragmentary

Catalan, Dutch, German, Hungarian,

Italian, Polish, Romanian

weak or no support

Basque, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Estonian, Finnish, Galician, Greek, Icelandic, Irish, Latvian,

Lithuanian, Maltese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, Swedish

excellent

Czech, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian,

Portuguese, Spanish


Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Danish, Estonian, Galician,

Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Norwegian, Polish, Serbian,

Slovak, Slovene, Swedish

weak or no support

Croatian, Icelandic, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese,

Romanian

excellent

English

good

Spee

ch

English

good

Dutch, French, German, Italian,

Spanish


Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Galician, Greek, Hungarian, Norwegian, Polish,

Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Swedish

weak or no support

Croatian, Estonian, Icelandic, Irish, Latvian,

Lithuanian, Maltese, Serbian

excellent

English

good

Czech, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian,

Polish, Spanish, Swedish


Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Danish, Estonian, Finnish, Galician,

Greek, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene

Icelandic, Irish, Latvian, Lithuanian,

Maltese

weak/no support excellent

Res

ourc

es

Text

Ana

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White Paper Press Campaign

q  Headline of press release:

At Least 21 European Languages in Danger of Digital Extinction. Good News and Bad News on the European Day of Languages.

q  Sent out to journalists, politicians and other stakeholder groups before the European Day of Languages (September 26).

q  Overwhelmed by the huge interest in the topic and our key findings!

q  470+ mentions in the online and traditional press.

q  40+ interviews with META-NET representatives (television, radio).

q  News came in from 41 countries in 35 different languages.


Response: Examples

q  Austria: Der Standard. q  Denmark: Politiken, Berlingske Tidende. q  Finland: Tiede. q  Germany: Heise Newsticker, Süddeutsche Zeitung. q  Greece: in.gr, Πρώτο Θέµα, Prosilipsis. q  Iceland: Fréttablaðið, Morgunblaðið. q  Italy: Wired. q  Norway: Computerworld. q  Slovenia: Delo, Dnevnik, Demokracija. q  Spain: El Mundo. q  UK: Huffington Post. q  USA: Mashable, NBC News, Reddit.


Website: Visitors Overview


began sending out press release

European Day of Languages

unusually high traffic

Website: Visitors’ Cities


City with the most visits: Brussels!

Strategic Research Agenda


q  META-NET Strategic Research Agenda for Multilingual Europe 2020.

q  Three priority research themes and application/innovation scenarios.

q  Can put Europe ahead of its competitors in this technology area.

q  Addresses the problems we found when preparing the white papers.

q  180+ contributors (research, industry). q  Final version to be ready in Nov. 2012.

q  SRA will be presented to the EC and national bodies.

Strategic Research Agenda


Recent News – Next Steps

q  META-SHARE Version 3.0 released in September 2012. q  Incoming resources from many EU-funded projects (40+ CAs). q  Launch event in January 2013. q  META-TRUST AISBL is an international non-profit organisation,

founded on September 12, 2012: http://www.meta-trust.eu. q  Legal person of META-NET. q  Strategic Research Agenda press campaign, focus on social media

(videos, infographics etc.). q  Meet with national research planners, funders, policy makers and

inform them about the Strategic Research Agenda. q  Data Liberation campaign.


Data Liberation Campaign

q  Many valuable resources, among others, at the National Institutions for Language, are not available for research.

q  We know that you’d like to free up the data sets that you’ve worked on so hard and to make them available for research purposes.

q  Many reasons: §  Situation in Europe is bad (White Paper Series; press campaign impact). §  Google, Facebook and others are overtaking us left, right and centre.

§  Two options: either declare defeat or do something about it. q  We want to help you liberate your data sets. q  Next week you’ll receive a letter from us with further information.


Thank you very much! [email protected] http://www.meta-net.eu http://www.facebook.com/META.Alliance

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