Tilde joins the leading language technology companies and researchers to shape technological developments for multilingual Europe. META-FORUM, to be held in Budapest, Hungary on June 27/28, is an international conference on powerful technologies for the multilingual European information society and an official event of the Hungarian EU Presidency.
Are Europe’s Languages in Danger? META-FORUM 2011 sends a mix of alarming and optimistic messages. Cultural and linguistic diversity is a hallmark of European integration. While the European Union works in 23 official languages, a total of about 60 languages are spoken on our continent when regional languages are taken into account. Surely, we cannot afford to sacrifice our linguistic diversity. But, can we afford to maintain it?
At the META-FORUM 2011 Andrejs Vasiļjevs, Tilde’s Chairman of the Board, will report on the key findings of 30 language white papers each surveying the status of a European language in the digital age. These white papers were prepared by the META-NET members for 29 European languages including all 23 EU official languages. Before the META-NET white papers, no one had assessed the state of European languages in regards to technology support. Now, META-NET can show why most languages are facing serious problems, and pinpoint the most threatening gaps.
The conference brings together representatives of top-notch European research centres; technology corporations; translation services and other users of language technology; language communities; and policy makers responsible for supporting research and innovation.
The meeting is organized by META-NET, a Network of Excellence consisting of 47 research centres in 31 countries and funded by the European Commission. META-NET activities in the Nordic and Baltic countries are managed by META-NORD project coordinated by Tilde.
At the META-FORUM Tilde will present the latest results of EU R&D collaboration projects LetsMT!, ACCURAT and TTC. Particularly important is cloud-based MT generation and customization platform developed by Tilde and European partners in LetsMT! project.
At the Budapest forum, META-NET will unveil a new service for sharing and maintaining such resources, called META-SHARE, which will greatly facilitate research and development. The existence and quality of such resources vary from language to language, depending on the commercial relevance of the language, the problems the language poses for automatic processing and the research already devoted to it. Tilde and its partners in the META-NORD project are already preparing language resources and tools for Nordic and Baltic languages to populate the META-SHARE service.
European integration is removing the borders for people, goods and capital. The last remaining borders that hinder the free flow of ideas and thought are our language boundaries. Language technology is anticipated to provide the means for overcoming language boundaries. Indeed, in the last few years, automatic translation has improved considerably. Nevertheless, research and development are still much too slow and fragmented to solve our language problems in time. For obvious economic reasons, most research and development is centred on English. The majority of European languages are severely under-resourced and some are almost completely neglected. In this sense, our languages are not yet future-proof.
The main message of META-FORUM 2011: Although the EU and its member states have already supported numerous individual research projects, the technology gap between “big” and “small” languages still keeps widening. There are strong reasons for approaching this immense challenge in a community effort involving the EU, its member states and industry, including: the high per-capita financial burden for smaller language communities; the needed transfer of technologies between languages; the interoperability of resources, tools and services; and the fact that linguistic borders often do not coincide with political borders. Europe must take action to prepare its languages for the digital age. They are a precious component of our cultural heritage and, as such, they deserve future-proofing. Tilde is committed to take a major role in driving these efforts for languages of Baltic countries and other “smaller” languages.
Background Information
META-NET Website: http://www.meta-net.eu
META-FORUM Website: http://www.meta-net.eu/events/meta-forum-2011
META-NORD Website: http://www.meta-nord.eu
