Alert button
Picture for José Manuel Gómez Pérez

José Manuel Gómez Pérez

Alert button

The European Language Technology Landscape in 2020: Language-Centric and Human-Centric AI for Cross-Cultural Communication in Multilingual Europe

Mar 30, 2020
Georg Rehm, Katrin Marheinecke, Stefanie Hegele, Stelios Piperidis, Kalina Bontcheva, Jan Hajič, Khalid Choukri, Andrejs Vasiļjevs, Gerhard Backfried, Christoph Prinz, José Manuel Gómez Pérez, Luc Meertens, Paul Lukowicz, Josef van Genabith, Andrea Lösch, Philipp Slusallek, Morten Irgens, Patrick Gatellier, Joachim Köhler, Laure Le Bars, Dimitra Anastasiou, Albina Auksoriūtė, Núria Bel, António Branco, Gerhard Budin, Walter Daelemans, Koenraad De Smedt, Radovan Garabík, Maria Gavriilidou, Dagmar Gromann, Svetla Koeva, Simon Krek, Cvetana Krstev, Krister Lindén, Bernardo Magnini, Jan Odijk, Maciej Ogrodniczuk, Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson, Mike Rosner, Bolette Sandford Pedersen, Inguna Skadiņa, Marko Tadić, Dan Tufiş, Tamás Váradi, Kadri Vider, Andy Way, François Yvon

Figure 1 for The European Language Technology Landscape in 2020: Language-Centric and Human-Centric AI for Cross-Cultural Communication in Multilingual Europe
Figure 2 for The European Language Technology Landscape in 2020: Language-Centric and Human-Centric AI for Cross-Cultural Communication in Multilingual Europe

Multilingualism is a cultural cornerstone of Europe and firmly anchored in the European treaties including full language equality. However, language barriers impacting business, cross-lingual and cross-cultural communication are still omnipresent. Language Technologies (LTs) are a powerful means to break down these barriers. While the last decade has seen various initiatives that created a multitude of approaches and technologies tailored to Europe's specific needs, there is still an immense level of fragmentation. At the same time, AI has become an increasingly important concept in the European Information and Communication Technology area. For a few years now, AI, including many opportunities, synergies but also misconceptions, has been overshadowing every other topic. We present an overview of the European LT landscape, describing funding programmes, activities, actions and challenges in the different countries with regard to LT, including the current state of play in industry and the LT market. We present a brief overview of the main LT-related activities on the EU level in the last ten years and develop strategic guidance with regard to four key dimensions.

* Proceedings of the 12th Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC 2020). To appear 
Viaarxiv icon

European Language Grid: An Overview

Mar 30, 2020
Georg Rehm, Maria Berger, Ela Elsholz, Stefanie Hegele, Florian Kintzel, Katrin Marheinecke, Stelios Piperidis, Miltos Deligiannis, Dimitris Galanis, Katerina Gkirtzou, Penny Labropoulou, Kalina Bontcheva, David Jones, Ian Roberts, Jan Hajic, Jana Hamrlová, Lukáš Kačena, Khalid Choukri, Victoria Arranz, Andrejs Vasiļjevs, Orians Anvari, Andis Lagzdiņš, Jūlija Meļņika, Gerhard Backfried, Erinç Dikici, Miroslav Janosik, Katja Prinz, Christoph Prinz, Severin Stampler, Dorothea Thomas-Aniola, José Manuel Gómez Pérez, Andres Garcia Silva, Christian Berrío, Ulrich Germann, Steve Renals, Ondrej Klejch

Figure 1 for European Language Grid: An Overview
Figure 2 for European Language Grid: An Overview
Figure 3 for European Language Grid: An Overview
Figure 4 for European Language Grid: An Overview

With 24 official EU and many additional languages, multilingualism in Europe and an inclusive Digital Single Market can only be enabled through Language Technologies (LTs). European LT business is dominated by hundreds of SMEs and a few large players. Many are world-class, with technologies that outperform the global players. However, European LT business is also fragmented, by nation states, languages, verticals and sectors, significantly holding back its impact. The European Language Grid (ELG) project addresses this fragmentation by establishing the ELG as the primary platform for LT in Europe. The ELG is a scalable cloud platform, providing, in an easy-to-integrate way, access to hundreds of commercial and non-commercial LTs for all European languages, including running tools and services as well as data sets and resources. Once fully operational, it will enable the commercial and non-commercial European LT community to deposit and upload their technologies and data sets into the ELG, to deploy them through the grid, and to connect with other resources. The ELG will boost the Multilingual Digital Single Market towards a thriving European LT community, creating new jobs and opportunities. Furthermore, the ELG project organises two open calls for up to 20 pilot projects. It also sets up 32 National Competence Centres (NCCs) and the European LT Council (LTC) for outreach and coordination purposes.

* Proceedings of the 12th Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC 2020). To appear 
Viaarxiv icon

Making Metadata Fit for Next Generation Language Technology Platforms: The Metadata Schema of the European Language Grid

Mar 30, 2020
Penny Labropoulou, Katerina Gkirtzou, Maria Gavriilidou, Miltos Deligiannis, Dimitrios Galanis, Stelios Piperidis, Georg Rehm, Maria Berger, Valérie Mapelli, Mickaël Rigault, Victoria Arranz, Khalid Choukri, Gerhard Backfried, José Manuel Gómez Pérez, Andres Garcia Silva

Figure 1 for Making Metadata Fit for Next Generation Language Technology Platforms: The Metadata Schema of the European Language Grid
Figure 2 for Making Metadata Fit for Next Generation Language Technology Platforms: The Metadata Schema of the European Language Grid
Figure 3 for Making Metadata Fit for Next Generation Language Technology Platforms: The Metadata Schema of the European Language Grid
Figure 4 for Making Metadata Fit for Next Generation Language Technology Platforms: The Metadata Schema of the European Language Grid

The current scientific and technological landscape is characterised by the increasing availability of data resources and processing tools and services. In this setting, metadata have emerged as a key factor facilitating management, sharing and usage of such digital assets. In this paper we present ELG-SHARE, a rich metadata schema catering for the description of Language Resources and Technologies (processing and generation services and tools, models, corpora, term lists, etc.), as well as related entities (e.g., organizations, projects, supporting documents, etc.). The schema powers the European Language Grid platform that aims to be the primary hub and marketplace for industry-relevant Language Technology in Europe. ELG-SHARE has been based on various metadata schemas, vocabularies, and ontologies, as well as related recommendations and guidelines.

* Proceedings of the 12th Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC 2020). To appear 
Viaarxiv icon