Georg Rehm. Computational Morphology and the META-NET Strategic Research Agenda for Multilingual Europe 2020. 3rd. International Workshop on Systems and Frameworks for Computational Morphology (SFCM 2013), Berlin, Germany, September 2013. September 06, 2013. Invited keynote talk.

1. The State of Computational Morphology for Europe’s
Languages and the META-NET Strategic Research Agenda
Georg Rehm
Network Manager META-NET
DFKI, Berlin, Germany
georg.rehm@dfki.de
3rd Int. Workshop on Systems and Frameworks for Computational Morphology (SFCM 2013)
Berlin, Germany – September 06, 2013
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).

2. Outline
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Introduction
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Language White Paper Series: Europe’s Languages in the Digital Age
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The State of Computational Morphology for Europe’s Languages
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The META-NET Strategic Research Agenda for Multilingual Europe
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Conclusions
http://www.meta-net.eu
2

3. Multilingual Europe
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Where were we back in 2010?
Challenge: Providing each language community with the most
advanced technologies for communication and information so that
maintaining their mother tongue does not turn into a disadvantage.
While research has made considerable progress in recent years, the
pace of progress is not fast enough to meet the challenge within the
next 10-20 years.
All stakeholders – researchers, LT user and provider industries,
language communities, funding programmes, policy makers –
should team up in a strategic alliance for a major dedicated
push.
http://www.meta-net.eu
3

4. Objectives
META-NET is a network of excellence dedicated to fostering the technological foundations of the European multilingual information society.
http://www.meta-net.eu
4

5. Four EU-Funded Projects
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Initial project: T4ME (FP7;
13 partners, 10 countries)
Three ICT-PSP consortia
since Feb. 2011: CESAR,
METANET4U, META-NORD
All four projects ended on
January 31, 2013.
All EU member states and
several non-member states
covered.
META-NET in Sept. 2013:
60 members in 34 countries.
http://www.meta-net.eu
http://www.meta-net.eu/members
5

6. Europe’s Languages in the Digital Age
Language White Paper Series
http://www.meta-net.eu
6

7. Language White Paper Series
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“Europe’s Languages in the Digital Age”.
Reports on the state of our languages in
the digital age and the level of support
through language technology.
Series covers 30 languages.
Key communication instruments to
address decision makers and journalists.
Inform about societal and technological
problems and challenges as well as
economic opportunities.
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>2 years in the making.
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>200 national experts as contributors.
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>8.000 copies printed and distributed to
politicians and journalists.
http://www.meta-net.eu
7

8. Language White Paper Series
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Structure:
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§
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Part 1: Executive Summary
Part 2: Languages at Risk — A Challenge for Language Technology
Part 3: The [X] Language in the European Information Society
Part 4: LT support for [X]
Part 5: About META-NET; References, etc.
Language White Paper Series (published at Springer):
§ Ca. 8.000 printed copies distributed by META-NET.
§ Printed copies can be purchased through the usual channels.
§ Ebooks available via SpringerLink (fee) and META-NET website (free).
§ http://www.meta-net.eu/whitepapers
http://www.meta-net.eu
8

9. 30 Languages Covered
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Basque
Bulgarian*
Catalan
Czech*
Danish*
Dutch*
English*
Estonian*
Finnish*
French*
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Galician
q Norwegian
German*
q Polish*
Greek*
q Portuguese*
Hungarian*
q Romanian*
Icelandic
q Serbian
Irish*
q Slovak*
Italian*
q Slovene*
Latvian*
q Spanish*
Lithuanian*
q Swedish*
Maltese*
q Croatian
Next up: Welsh
* = Official EU language
http://www.meta-net.eu
9

10. Cross-Lingual Comparison
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In four application areas, each language is assigned to one of five
clusters, ranging from excellent LT support to weak/no support:
1. Machine Translation
2. Speech Processing
3. Text Analytics
4. Language Resources
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Results finalised at a
meeting in Berlin with
representatives of all
30 languages
(October 21/22, 2011).
http://www.meta-net.eu
10

11. Resources
Speech
Text Analysis
MT
excellent
good
moderate
fragmentary
weak or no support
English
moderate
fragmentary
weak or no support
Dutch, French,
German, Italian,
Spanish
Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech,
Danish, Finnish, Galician, Greek,
Hungarian, Norwegian, Polish,
Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak,
Slovene, Swedish
Croatian, Estonian, Icelandic, Irish,
Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Serbian
good
moderate
fragmentary
weak or no support
Czech, Dutch, Finnish,
French, German,
Italian, Portuguese,
Spanish
Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Danish,
Estonian, Galician, Greek,
Hungarian, Irish, Norwegian, Polish,
Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, Swedish
Croatian, Icelandic, Latvian,
Lithuanian, Maltese, Romanian
good
moderate
fragmentary
weak/no support
English
excellent
good
English
excellent
Catalan, Dutch, German, Hungarian,
Italian, Polish, Romanian
English
excellent
French, Spanish
Basque, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech,
Danish, Estonian, Finnish, Galician,
Greek, Icelandic, Irish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Norwegian, Portuguese,
Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, Swedish
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
http://www.meta-net.eu
11

12. Europe’s Languages and LT
English
good support through
Language Technology
http://www.meta-net.eu
Dutch
French
German
Italian
Spanish
Catalan
Czech
Finnish
Hungarian
Polish
Portuguese
Swedish
Basque
Bulgarian
Danish
Galician
Greek
Norwegian
Romanian
Slovak
Slovene
Croatian
Estonian
Icelandic
Irish
Latvian
Lithuanian
Maltese
Serbian
weak or
no support
12

13. 450
400
350
300
Languages treated in the 2010 editions of
Not
enough
R&I
on
European
languages
of Computational Linguistics and
Journal
Conferences of ACL, EMNLP and COLING.
Many European languages with no reference
at all: Slovak, Maltese, Lithuanian, Irish,
➔ LT
research
on
European
languages,
except
for
English,
is
too
weak
and
Albanian, Croatian, Galician etc.
too
slow
250
➔ Many
languages
are
badly
covered
200
150
100
0
English
Chinese
German,
Standard
French
Spanish
Japanese
Arabic
Dutch
Portuguese
Czech
Danish
Swedish
Hindi
Korean
Turkish
Italian
Russian
Finnish
Hebrew
Hungarian
Slovene
Urdu
Romanian
Zulu
Bulgarian
Catalan-­‐Valencian-­‐Balear
Greek
Thai
Welsh
Estonian
Basque
German,
Swiss
InukStut
Indonesian
Ineseño
LaSn
Marathi
Malay
Pushto
Serbian
Syriac
Tamil
UgariSc
Ukrainian
Uspanteko
Vietnamese
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14. Key Observations
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When it comes to Language Technology support, there are massive
differences between Europe’s languages and technology areas.
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LT support for English is ahead of any other language.
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Even support for English is far from being perfect.
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The gap between English and the other languages keeps widening!
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Several languages – Icelandic, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese – receive
this weakest score in all four areas!
At least 21 European languages in danger of digital extinction!
(Languages put into the “weak or no support” category at least once.)
http://www.meta-net.eu
14

15. White Paper Box Sets (100 copies)
http://www.meta-net.eu
15

16. White Paper Website
http://www.meta-net.eu
16

17. Press Campaign
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Headline of press release:
At Least 21 European Languages in Danger of Digital Extinction.
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Sent out to journalists, politicians and other stakeholder groups on the
European Day of Languages (Sept. 26, 2012).
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Overwhelmed by the huge interest in the topic and our key findings!
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600+ mentions in the press.
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50+ broadcast interviews with META-NET representatives (ca. 30 radio
interviews, ca. 25 television reports).
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News came in from 40+ countries in 35+ different languages.
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Whole of Europe covered.
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Two Parliamentary Questions in the European Parliament on the
“digital extinction of languages” topic.
http://www.meta-net.eu
17

18. Coverage by Country
Basque Country, Austria, 0.20%
0.40%
Costa Rica, 0.20%
Finland, 0.70%
Portugal, 0.40%
Canada, 0.20%
Brazil, 0.40%
Sweden, 0.70%
New Zealand, 0.20%
Spain
Bulgaria
International
Latvia
Mexico, Slovakia,
Belgium, 0.90%
Netherlands
Greece
0.40% 0.40%
Bosnia and Herzegovina,
UK, 1.10%
Romania
Cyprus, 0.20%
Norway, 0.40%
Ireland, 1.30%
0.20% Serbia
Australia, 0.20%
Italy
Lithuania, 1.30%
Poland,
Germany
Russia
0.70%
Hungary, 0.20%
Estonia
Denmark, Latin America, 1.30%
France
Slovenia
1.30%
USA, 1.50%
Iceland
Malta
Malta, 2%
Spain, 15.90%
Iceland, 2.20%
USA
Denmark
Slovenia, 2.40%
Latin America
Lithuania
Bulgaria,
Ireland
France, 2.60%
10.80%
UK
Belgium
Estonia, 2.90%
Finland
Sweden
Russia, 3.50%
Poland
International, 7.90%
Norway
Mexico
Germany, 3.50%
Brazil
Slovakia
Italy, 4.20%
Basque Country
Latvia, 5.30%
Portugal
Serbia, 4.40%
Austria
New Zealand
Netherlands, 4.80%
Hungary
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Greece, 4.60%
Costa Rica
Romania, 4.40%
Cyprus
Canada
Australia
http://www.meta-net.eu
18

19. Response: Examples
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Austria:
Denmark:
Finland:
Germany:
Greece:
Hungary:
Iceland:
Italy:
Norway:
Slovenia:
Serbia:
Spain:
UK:
USA:
http://www.meta-net.eu
Der Standard.
Politiken, Berlingske Tidende.
Tiede.
Heise Newsticker, Süddeutsche Zeitung.
in.gr, Πρώτο Θέµα, Prosilipsis.
Origo.
Fréttablaðið, Morgunblaðið.
Wired.
Computerworld.
Delo, Dnevnik, Demokracija.
Politika.
El Mundo.
Huffington Post.
Mashable, NBC News, Reddit.
19

20. pakker.
»Pengene betyder, at der kommer bedre
forhold for kræftpatienter. Det er vigtigt, at
folk får mulighed for at blive behandlet hurtigt, så de ikke skal gå rundt og være bekymrede,« siger formand for kvalitetsudvalget i
Region Hovedstaden, Kirsten Lee (R).
rende niveau.
I Kræftens Bekæmpelse hilser direktør Leif
Vestergaard Pedersen det velkomment, at
Region Hovedstaden nu bruger 32 mio. kr. til
at udvide kapaciteten.
»Det har vist sig, at der er et forbedringspotentiale på dette område, og derfor er det godt,
at man prioriterer det. Flere og flere får kræft,
og flere og flere overlever. Det betyder, at kapaciteten gradvist skal øges hele tiden. Servicemål er et godt initiativ, og et mål på 90-95 pct.
er nok det realistiske, selv om udgangspunktet bør være 100 procent,« siger Leif Vestergaard Pedersen og tilføjer:
»Men så er det også vigtigt at holde fast i det
mål og ikke stille sig tilfreds med, at 80 eller 85
pct. kommer igennem til tiden.« B
76
Sådan læses grafikken:
Procentdel
uden for
servicemål
Procentdel
inden for
servicemål
Press Campaign: Highlights
Flere får kræft – og flere overlever
Konkret er hensigten at udvide den onkologiske kapacitet – det vil sige stråle- og kemobehandlingen – på såvel Rigshospitalet, Herlev
Hospital, Hillerød Hospital og Bornholms
Hospital.
Desuden sættes der penge af til at øge antallet af operationer og udvide ambulatoriekapaciteten på det urologiske område på Herlev,
Positiv udvikling
Negativ udvikling
INFOGRAFIK: HENRIK KIÆR / TEKST: FLEMMING STEEN PEDERSEN
KILDE: REGION HOVEDSTADEN
Ord. Forskere arbejder på at forbedre danske oversættelser på internettet.
Dårlig sprogteknologi truer dansk på nettet
Af Jens Ejsing
// ejs@berlingske.dk
Det danske sprog har det svært i den digitale
verden.
Det konstaterer danske sprogforskere- og
eksperter i forbindelse med den nye internationale undersøgelse META-NET, der ser
nærmere på, hvordan en lang række mindre,
europæiske sprog som dansk klarer sig i den
digitale verden.
Forskerne fra bl.a. Københavns Universitet
og Dansk Sprognævn når frem til, at dansk
i fremtiden kan få det endnu sværere i den
digitale verden, fordi Google Translate, GPSer,
applikationer til smartphones og andre sprogteknologiske programmer ikke i tilstrækkelig
grad formår at behandle de mange nuancer i
det danske sprog.
Professor i sprogteknologi på Københavns
Universitet, Bolette Sandford Pedersen,
mener, at der er brug for en slags digital dansk
sprogbank fyldt med data, så bl.a. oversættelser bliver så præcise og gode som muligt. Med
http://www.meta-net.eu
hjælp fra sprogbanken kan forskere ifølge
professoren hjælpe virksomheder med at forbedre programmer, der skal håndtere sproglig
viden om bl.a. maskinoversættelse, talegenkendelse og informationssøgning.
Dermed vil der blive længere mellem fejlagtige oversættelser, som når »hæld olie på panden« med Google Translate bliver til »pour oil
on the forehead« på engelsk. Oversættelser,
der er i værste fald er så upræcise, at danskere
ender med at fravælge deres eget sprog i den
digitale verden.
Sproghjælp til virksomheder
Hun anerkender dog, at »teknologien til automatiske oversættelser på mange måder er
fantastisk«.
»Den er bare ikke god nok, når det gælder
dansk,« siger hun:
»Det er som om, at vi i et vist omfang lægger
det i hænderne på Google eller andre virksomheder at afgøre, om dansk skal behandles
godt nok eller ej. Men det danske marked
er ikke stort for dem. Spørgsmålet er derfor,
fakta H
Sprog i Europa
H Der er omkring 80 sprog i EU. For 21 af
dem – også dansk – gælder det, at der er
store sprogteknologiske mangler, når det
gælder bl.a. maskinoversættelse, talegenkendelse og informationssøgning.
H Ifølge en EU-undersøgelse køber et
stigende antal europæiske internetbrugere
varer eller tjenester på nettet, hvor det sprog,
der bliver anvendt, ikke er deres eget. Det
gælder over halvdelen af brugerne.
H Over hver tredje anvender et fremmedsprog til at skrive mail eller indlæg på nettet.
om vi ikke i højere grad selv skal gøre noget
for at sikre, at det fornødne datamateriale er
til rådighed, så vi får gode oversættelser og
anden god sprogteknologi. Det kunne f.eks.
være ved, at vi gjorde en indsats for at få oprettet en sprogbank med en masse beriget materiale om dansk.«
»Hvis vi hele tiden oplever, at oversættelser er behæftede med fejl, tør vi ikke stole på
dem,« siger hun og understreger, at »fejlagtige
oversættelser kan føre til store misforståelser«.
Ifølge Dansk Sprognævns direktør, Sabine
Kirchmeier-Andersen, kan dårlig sprogteknologi have konsekvenser for mange danskere,
der ikke er så gode til engelsk.
»Hvis vi har ambitioner om at bruge det
danske sprog i fremtidens teknologiske
univers, skal der gøres en indsats nu for at
fastholde ekspertise og udbygge den viden, vi
har,« mener hun:
»Ellers risikerer vi, at kun folk, der taler flydende engelsk, vil få glæde af de nye generationer af web-, tele- og robotteknologi, der er på
vej.« B
20

21. Press Campaign: Highlights
38
Πέµπτη 27 Σεπτεµβρίου 2012 ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΟΣ ΤΥΠΟΣ
Life
Date 30 September 2012
Page 16
Γιώργος
Μπαµπινιώτης.
GREEKLISH
Η γλώσσα της
αποξένωσης…
ΠΟΛΛΕΣ ΕΥΡΩΠΑΪΚΕΣ ΓΛΩΣΣΕΣ ΘΕΩΡΟΥΝΤΑΙ ΤΕΧΝΟΛΟΓΙΚΑ… ΞΕΠΕΡΑΣΜΕΝΕΣ
Με ψηφιακή εξαφάνιση
κινδυνεύουν τα ελληνικά
Σ
την ψηφιακή εποχή δεν…
µιλούν ελληνικά, όπως και
αρκετές άλλες ευρωπαϊκές
γλώσσες, σύµφωνα µε πανευρωπαϊκή έκθεση µε την υπογραφή 200 και
πλέον ειδικών. Η συγκεκριµένη µελέτη δηµοσιεύτηκε από το επιστηµονικό
δίκτυο ΜΕΤΑ-ΝΕΤ µε αφορµή τη χτεσινή Ευρωπαϊκή Ηµέρα Γλωσσών.
Για τις ανάγκες της έρευνάς τους,
γλωσσολόγοι από 34 χώρες της Γηραιάς Ηπείρου βαθµολόγησαν τις
διαθέσιµες γλωσσικές υπηρεσίες
και δηµιούργησαν ένα «Λευκό Βιβλίο» για κάθε ευρωπαϊκή γλώσσα.
Στη µελέτη τους, οι ειδικοί αναζήτησαν µεταξύ άλλων τέσσερα βασικά
ηλεκτρονικά εργαλεία, δηλαδή την
ύπαρξη αυτόµατης µετάφρασης,
τη δυνατότητα φωνητικής αλληλεπίδρασης και ψηφιακής ανάλυσης
κειµένου, ενώ ταυτόχρονα διερευνήθηκε και η διαθεσιµότητα γλωσσικών
πόρων ή πηγών.
Σε πρώτη φάση εξέτασαν τις ιστοσελίδες που επιτρέπουν στους χρήστες να κάνουν µεταφράσεις online,
όπως, για παράδειγµα, η υπηρεσία
του κολοσσού πληροφορικής Google
Translate. Την ίδια ώρα, εξετάστηκε
και η «επικοινωνία» των ελληνόφωνων χρηστών µε τις…συσκευές τους,
όπως για παράδειγµα η δυνατότητα
ΕΛΕΝΗ ΒΕΡΓΟΥ
evergou@e-typos.com
να «µιλήσει» κάποιος στο GPS στη
µητρική του γλώσσα. Οι ερευνητές
κατέληξαν στο συµπέρασµα ότι
υπάρχουν τέτοιες συσκευές, αλλά
δεν είναι τόσο διαδεδοµένες όσο οι
αγγλόφωνες.
Το «χρυσό» µετάλλιο κατακτά,
όπως είναι άλλωστε και λογικό, η
αγγλική γλώσσα. Οι αγγλόφωνοι χρήστες έχουν την καλύτερη δυνατή τεχνολογική υποστήριξη, κάτι το οποίο
ευνοεί την περαιτέρω εξάπλωση της
γλώσσας. Από «τεχνολογικό αποκλεισµό» κινδυνεύουν περισσότερο
η ισλανδική, η λετονική, η λιθουανική
και η µαλτέζικη γλώσσα, ενώ σε λίγο
καλύτερη µοίρα βρίσκονται η ελληνική, η βουλγαρική, η ουγγρική και
η πολωνική, που όπως αναφέρει η
έρευνα έχουν «αποσπασµατική» τεχνολογική υποστήριξη.
«Μέτρια» χαρακτηρίζεται η υποστήριξη χρηστών σε ολλανδική, γαλλική, γερµανική, ιταλική και ισπανική
γλώσσα. Οι επικεφαλής της επιστηµονικής οµάδας, Χανς Ουζκοράιτ και
Γκεόργκ Ρεµ, αναφέρουν χαρακτηριστικά: «Υπάρχουν δραµατικές διαφορές στην υποστήριξη της γλωσσικής
http://www.meta-net.eu
τεχνολογίας ανάµεσα στις διάφορες
ευρωπαϊκές γλώσσες. Το χάσµα µεταξύ “µικρών” και “µεγάλων” γλωσσών
ολοένα και διευρύνεται. Πρέπει να
εξασφαλίσουµε τον εφοδιασµό των
µικρότερων και λιγότερο πλούσιων
σε ψηφιακούς πόρους γλωσσών µε
τις απαραίτητες βασικές τεχνολογίες. ∆ιαφορετικά, οι γλώσσες αυτές
είναι καταδικασµένες σε ψηφιακή
εξαφάνιση».
Μάλιστα, οι ειδικοί τονίζουν ότι χωρίς αποφασιστική δράση οι γλώσσες
αυτές δύσκολα θα… επιβιώσουν στον
ψηφιακό κόσµου του 21ου αιώνα. Η
κ. Μαρία Γαβριηλίδου, µέλος της επιστηµονικής οµάδας από το Ινστιτούτο
Οι αγγλόφωνοι
χρήστες έχουν
την καλύτερη
δυνατή τεχνολογική
υποστήριξη,
γεγονός που ευνοεί
την περαιτέρω
εξάπλωση
της γλώσσας
Επεξεργασίας του Λόγου Ερευνητικό
Κέντρο Αθηνά, λέει στον «Ε.Τ.»: «Η
έρευνα αυτή δεν λέει ότι δεν θα ζήσει
η ελληνική γλώσσα ή ότι κινδυνεύει
µε εξαφάνιση». Η ειδικός εξηγεί ότι
όσο υπάρχουν άνθρωποι που µιλάνε, γράφουν και επικοινωνούν µε µια
γλώσσα, τότε αυτή θα συνεχίσει να
υπάρχει. Είναι σηµαντικό, όµως, να
έχουν όλοι οι χρήστες τη δυνατότητα
να «µιλήσουν» στις µηχανές, όπως τα
GPS τους, στα ελληνικά και να έχουν
στη διάθεσή τους γλωσσικά εργαλεία
ηλεκτρονικών υπολογιστών.
Μεταξύ αυτών των «εργαλείων»
είναι οι διορθωτές ορθογραφικών και
συντακτικών λαθών, που χρησιµοποιούνται καθηµερινά από εκατοντάδες
Ελληνες χρήστες και βασίζονται στη
γλωσσική τεχνολογία.
Παρ’ όλα αυτά, τονίζει ότι η ψηφιακή εξάπλωση µιας γλώσσας είναι
σηµαντική «∆εν είναι στα χέρια του
µέσου χρήστη. Οι εκάστοτε κυβερνήσεις, η Ευρωπαϊκή Ενωση και ο
ιδιωτικός τοµέας πρέπει να χρηµατοδοτήσουν την ανάπτυξη αυτής της
τεχνολογίας για όλες τις γλώσσες»,
αναφέρει και συνεχίζει: «Οι χρήστες,
όµως, πρέπει να απαιτούν να υπάρχουν και στη γλώσσα τους τα µέσα
αυτά και να µην ικανοποιούνται µε
τα αγγλικά». ■
ΜΕ GREEKLISH επικοινωνούν πλέον µέσω µηνυµάτων ή email οι περισσότεροι
νέοι της χώρας µας. Παρά
το γεγονός ότι τα τελευταία χρόνια υπάρχουν τα
γλωσσικά εργαλεία, τα
οποία επιτρέπουν τη χρήση
της ελληνικής γραµµατοσειράς, έφηβοι και νέοι
ενήλικες φαίνεται ότι δεν
έχουν «αγκαλιάσει» αυτές
τις τεχνολογίες. Ο καθηγητής Γλωσσολογίας, κ.
Γιώργος Μπαµπινιώτης, λέει
στον «Ε.Τ.»: «Τα greeklish
είναι πρόβληµα για την
ελληνική γλώσσα, ιδίως για
ανθρώπους νέας ηλικίας
για έναν καθαρά γλωσσικό
λόγο. Με τη χρήση των
greeklish αποξενώνονται
από τη µορφή της λέξης ή
όπως λέµε το ετυµολογικό
ίνδαλµα που δηλώνεται µε
την ορθογραφία της λέξης
και συνδέεται και µε τη σηµασία της λέξης και µε την
προέλευσή της». Ο κίνδυνος,
µε τον οποίο έρχονται αντιµέτωποι οι νέοι άνθρωποι,
είναι η αποξένωση από τη
γραπτή µορφή της γλώσσας. Αυτή η «οικειότητα»,
όµως, βοηθάει και στην
κατανόηση της σηµασίας
αλλά και την προέλευση της
λέξης. «Αυτή η αποξένωση
δεν είναι άνευ σηµασίας»,
αναφέρει ο ειδικός, ο οποίος
εξηγεί ότι η διαδικασία της
γραφής βοηθάει να εντυπωθεί η λέξη και να συνδεθεί
µε άλλες οµόρριζες λέξεις.
«Οταν χρησιµοποιείται αυτή
η µορφή επικοινωνίας, καταστρέφονται, ατονούν. ∆εν
είναι προς θάνατο, αλλά θα
κάνει ζηµιά», αναφέρει ο
κ. Μπαµπινιώτης, ο οποίος
συµβουλεύει τους χρήστες
να επιλέγουν την ελληνική
γραµµατοσειρά.
Copyright material. This may only be copied under the terms of a Newspaper Licensing Agency
agreement (www.nla.co.uk) or with written publisher permission.
For external republishing rights see www.nla-republishing.com
21

22. Press Campaign: Highlights
049-ΚΟΣΜΟΣ 29/09/2012 1:41 ? Μ Page 49
49
KYPIAKH 30 ΣΕΠΤΕΜΒΡΙΟΥ 2012
Οι περισσότερες ευρωπαϊκές γλώσσες
κινδυνεύουν µε ψηφιακή εξαφάνιση
Τη γλώσσα
µού... έχασαν
Πρέπει να εξασφαλιστεί ο εφοδιασµός των µικρότερων και λιγότερο πλούσιων
-σε ψηφιακούς πόρους- γλωσσών µε τις απαραίτητες βασικές τεχνολογίες
Η
26η Σεπτεµβρίου έχει καθιερωθεί από το Συµβούλιο της
Ευρώπης ως η Ευρωπαϊκή
Ηµέρα των Γλωσσών, αλλά,
σύµφωνα µε µια νέα ευρωπαϊκή επιστηµονική έκθεση, οι 21 από τις 30
γλώσσες της Ευρώπης -µεταξύ των οποίων και η Ελληνική- αντιµετωπίζουν κίνδυνο ψηφιακής εξαφάνισης.
Η έρευνα κρούει τον κώδωνα κινδύνου, καθώς διαπίστωσε ότι η ψηφιακή
βοήθεια για τις περισσότερες ευρωπαϊκές
γλώσσες είναι ελλιπής ή απολύτως ανύπαρκτη για τους χρήστες.
Τις έφαγαν οι κοινές
Η έκθεση, µε τη µορφή µιας σειράς
Λευκών Βίβλων (µε τίτλο «Γλώσσες στην
Ευρωπαϊκή Κοινωνία της Πληροφορίας»),
από το επιστηµονικό δίκτυο ΜΕΤΑΝΕΤ, το οποίο συνενώνει 60 ερευνητικά
κέντρα σε 34 χώρες, επισηµαίνει ότι οι
γλώσσες που µιλιούνται από σχετικά
µικρό αριθµό ανθρώπων κινδυνεύουν,
επειδή δεν έχουν τεχνολογική υποστήριξη όπως έχουν οι ευρέως χρησιµοποιούµενες γλώσσες. Λευκές Βίβλοι
έχουν καταρτιστεί για τις εξής ευρωπαϊκές γλώσσες: αγγλικά, βασκικά,
βουλγαρικά, γαλικιανά, γαλλικά, γερµανικά, δανικά, ελληνικά, εσθονικά,
ιρλανδικά, ισλανδικά, ισπανικά, ιταλικά,
καταλανικά, κροατικά, λετονικά, λιθουανικά, µαλτέζικα, νορβηγικά (µπουκµόλ και νινόρσκ), ολλανδικά, ουγγρικά,
πολωνικά, πορτογαλικά, ρουµανικά,
σερβικά, σλοβακικά, σλοβενικά, σουηδικά, τσεχικά και φινλανδικά. Κάθε
Λευκή Βίβλος είναι γραµµένη στη γλώσσα στην οποία αναφέρεται και είναι
µεταφρασµένη στα αγγλικά.
Τέσσερις µεγάλοι κίνδυνοι
Σύµφωνα µε τη νέα µελέτη, η Ισλανδική, η Λετονική, η Λιθουανική και
η Μαλτέζικη αντιµετωπίζουν τον µεγαλύτερο κίνδυνο εξαφάνισης σε µια
ευρωπαϊκή τεχνολογική κοινωνία, που
ολοένα περισσότερο προωθεί τη χρήση
συγκεκριµένων γλωσσών και ιδίως της
Αγγλικής. Όµως και άλλες γλώσσες,
όπως η Ελληνική, η Βουλγαρική, η Ουγγρική και η Πολωνική, επίσης κινδυνεύουν στον σύγχρονο ψηφιακό κόσµο.
Η έρευνα του ΜΕΤΑ-ΝΕΤ, στην οποία
συνέβαλαν περισσότεροι από 200 ειδικοί,
αξιολογεί τον κίνδυνο για κάθε γλώσσα
µε βάση τέσσερα βασικά κριτήρια σε
τεχνολογικό/ψηφιακό επίπεδο: την ύπαρξη αυτόµατης µετάφρασης στη συγκεκριµένη γλώσσα, τη δυνατότητα φωνητικής αλληλεπίδρασης, τη δυνατότητα
ψηφιακής ανάλυσης κειµένου και τη
διαθεσιµότητα των σχετικών ψηφιακών
γλωσσικών πόρων/πηγών.
Οι δυνατές
Η γλώσσα µε την καλύτερη βαθµολογία στα κριτήρια είναι ασφαλώς η
Αγγλική, που απολαµβάνει τη συγκριτικά
καλύτερη τεχνολογική υποστήριξη (αν
και όχι την καλύτερη δυνατή), γεγονός
που διευκολύνει την περαιτέρω εξάπλωσή της.
http://www.meta-net.eu
Ακολουθούν µε ικανοποιητική ή µέτρια τεχνολογική/ψηφιακή υποστήριξη
η Ολλανδική, η Γαλλική, η Γερµανική,
η Ιταλική και η Ισπανική. Η Ελληνική,
όπως επίσης η Βασκική, η Καταλανική,
η Πολωνική, η Ουγγρική κ.ά. κατατάσσονται στις γλώσσες µε «αποσπασµατική» µόνο υποστήριξη, γι’ αυτό
ακριβώς θεωρούνται γλώσσες υψηλού
κινδύνου προς εξαφάνιση.
Δραµατικές διαφορές
Σύµφωνα µε τους επιµελητές της µελέτης Χανς Ουζκοράιτ και Γκέοργκ Ρεµ,
«υπάρχουν δραµατικές διαφορές στην
υποστήριξη της γλωσσικής τεχνολογίας
ανάµεσα στις διάφορες ευρωπαϊκές
γλώσσες και τεχνολογικές περιοχές. Το
χάσµα µεταξύ ‘µικρών’ και ‘µεγάλων’
γλωσσών ολοένα και διευρύνεται. Πρέπει
να εξασφαλίσουµε τον εφοδιασµό των
µικρότερων και λιγότερο πλούσιων -σε
ψηφιακούς πόρους- γλωσσών µε τις
απαραίτητες βασικές τεχνολογίες, αλλιώς
οι γλώσσες αυτές είναι καταδικασµένες
σε ψηφιακή εξαφάνιση».
Ως ελπίδα αυτών των γλωσσών θεωρείται η βελτίωση και η ευρύτερη αξιοποίηση του λογισµικού γλωσσικής τεχνολογίας, το οποίο επιτρέπει τη φωνητική και τη γραπτή επεξεργασία των
διαφόρων γλωσσών.
Παραδείγµατα αυτών των δυνατοτήτων είναι οι ηλεκτρονικοί ορθογραφικοί
και συντακτικοί διορθωτές κειµένων,
οι διαδραστικοί προσωπικοί «βοηθοί»
των έξυπνων κινητών τηλεφώνων (π.χ.
η Siri στο iPhone), τα συστήµατα αυτόµατης µετάφρασης, τα ηλεκτρονικά
συστήµατα διαλόγου των τηλεφωνικών
κέντρων, οι µηχανές αναζήτησης, η
συνθετική φωνή στα συστήµατα πλοήγησης των αυτοκινήτων. κ.ά.
Το βασικό πρόβληµα
Το σηµαντικό, σύµφωνα µε την έκθεση, είναι όλες αυτές οι δυνατότητες
να προσφέρονται στους χρήστες και στη
µητρική τους γλώσσα που κινδυνεύει
µε εξαφάνιση. Χωρίς αποφασιστική δράση, γίνεται η δυσοίωνη πρόβλεψη ότι
οι γλώσσες αυτές δύσκολα θα επιβιώσουν
στον ψηφιακό κόσµο του 21ου αιώνα.
Ένα πρόβληµα είναι ότι το λογισµικό
αυτών των συστηµάτων γλωσσικής τεχνολογίας στηρίζεται σε στατιστικές µεθόδους που απαιτούν τεράστιες ποσότητες γραπτών ή φωνητικών δεδοµένων,
όµως τόσα πολλά δεδοµένα είναι δύσκολο
να αποκτηθούν για γλώσσες που οµιλούνται από σχετικά λίγους ανθρώπους.
Εξάλλου, ακόµα και για ευρέως χρησιµοποιούµενες γλώσσες όπως τα αγγλικά, η σχετική γλωσσική τεχνολογία
έχει ακόµα αδυναµίες, που είναι π.χ.
φανερές στις άκρως ανεπαρκείς και γεµάτες λάθη αυτόµατες µεταφράσεις. Η
έκθεση προτείνει ότι πρέπει να αναληφθεί
µια συντονισµένη µεγάλης κλίµακας
προσπάθεια στην Ευρώπη, προκειµένου
σταδιακά να δηµιουργηθούν ή να βελτιωθούν οι αναγκαίες τεχνολογίες και
να βοηθηθούν οι γλώσσες που είναι ψηφιακά παραγκωνισµένες.
22

23. Press Campaign: Highlights
http://www.meta-net.eu
23

24. Press Campaign: Highlights
http://www.meta-net.eu
24

25. Press Campaign: Highlights
http://www.meta-net.eu
25

26. Press Campaign: Highlights
http://www.meta-net.eu
26

27. Press Campaign: Highlights
http://www.meta-net.eu
27

28. Website: Visitors Overview
began sending European Day
out press release of Languages
unusually
high traffic
http://www.meta-net.eu
28

29. Website: Visitors’ Cities
City with the most
visits: Brussels!
http://www.meta-net.eu
29

30. The State of Computational Morphology for Europe’s Languages
Computational Morphology for
Europe’s Languages
http://www.meta-net.eu
30

31. Computational Morphology?
q
So, what is the state of Computational Morphology support? Do we
have precise, good, reliable tools for all European languages?
q
Answering this question is a non-trivial, difficult and complex task.
q
However, we can provide a rough approximation.
q
q
In META-NET we had a look at 30 languages (Basque, Bulgarian,
Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish,
French, Galician, German, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Irish,
Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Norwegian, Polish,
Portuguese, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish).
We gathered data on several aspects that were used to prepare a
cross-language comparison, along with statistics, discussions,
comparisons, experts’ opinions, etc.
http://www.meta-net.eu
31

32. Coarse-Grained View
q
We investigated four main areas: Machine Translation; Speech; Text
Analytics; Language Resources.
q
Computational Morphology is covered by Text Analytics.
q
Text Analytics comprises, among others,
§ the quality and coverage of existing text analytics technologies
(morphology, syntax, semantics),
§ coverage of linguistic phenomena and domains,
§ amount and variety of available applications,
§ quality and coverage of existing lexical resources and grammars.
http://www.meta-net.eu
32

33. Text Analytics
Coarse-Grained View
excellent
http://www.meta-net.eu
good
English
moderate
Dutch
French
German
Italian
Spanish
fragmentary
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
33

34. Key Observations
q
When it comes to Language Technology support, there are massive
differences between Europe’s languages and technology areas.
q
LT support for English is ahead of any other language.
q
Even support for English is far from being perfect.
q
The gap between English and the other languages keeps widening!
q
Several languages – Icelandic, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese – receive
this weakest score in all four areas!
http://www.meta-net.eu
34

35. Simplified Methodology
q
Distributed data collection process in the respective countries.
q
30 tables provide data for all languages (tools, resources, gaps etc.).
q
Reduce numbers to one final score per language and area.
q
Calibration of tables across languages in smaller groups.
q
Final scores for each area and language were derived from two
central features (quality, coverage), resulting in one big table:
Basque
Bulgarian
Catalan
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
English
Estonian
Finnish
French
Galician
German
Greek
Hungarian
Icelandic
Irish
Italian
Latvian
Lithuanian
Maltese
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Serbian
Slovak
Slovene
Spanish
Swedish
Language Technology (Tools, Technologies, Applications)
Tokenization, Morphology (tokenization, POS tagging,
morphological analysis/generation)analysis)
Parsing (shallow or deep syntactic
Sentence Semantics (WSD, argument structure, semantic roles)
Text Semantics(coreferenceresolution, context, pragmatics,
inference) Discourse Processing (text structure, coherence,
Advanced
rhetorical structure/RST, argumentative zoning, argumentation,
Information Retrieval(text indexing, multimedia IR, crosslingual
IR)
Information Extraction (named entity recognition,
event/relation extraction, opinion/sentiment report generation,
Language Generation (sentence generation,recognition, text
text generation)
Summarization, Question Answering,advanced Information
Access Technologies
Machine Translation
Speech Recognition
Speech Synthesis
Dialogue Management (dialogue capabilities and user
modelling)
5
4
3,1
1
1
4
3
0
2
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4
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4
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4
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0,2
0
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6
0
0
5
2,2
4
0
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4
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0
0
0
1
0
0
2
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0
4,1
2
0
0
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3
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3
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4
3
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3
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0
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0
0
0
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0
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3
3
4
4
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2,2
1,1
2,1
1,1
5
4
1,3
1,2
1
2
2
1
2
3
3,1
5,1
1
4,1
3,1
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2
0
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0
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4
3
5
4
4
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5
4,1
0
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0
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2
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0
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0
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2
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3
0
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5
4
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2
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2
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2
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4,1
3,1
4
2
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4,1
2
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4
2,1
1
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3
3
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2,2
1
0
0
2,2
5
2
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3,1
4
2
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2,1
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2
2,2
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1
2
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3
4,1
3
3,1
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1
2
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3,1
2
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0
0
3
3
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0
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5
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4
3,1
2,1
3,1
2,1
3,1
1,3
1,2
1,3
2,1
1,2
1,2
3
4
1,3
3
1,1
2,2
2,2
1,2
0
2,1
4,1
1,3
2,1
3,1
2,1
2,1
0
4,1
4,2
3
3
4
5,1
1,1
5
4,1
3
4,1
4
4
2,1
2
2,1
2,1
3,1
1
3
5
4
3,1
0
3,1
3,2
0
2,1
3
2,1
2,1
2
4
4
3,1
2,1
3,1
3
1,1
2
3,1
3,1
1,2
3
3,1
3
1,1
1,1
5
2
1
0
5
4,1
2,2
4,1
4,1
2
4
1
3,1
3
1,1
2
2
2,1
1,2
3
3,1
3
2,1
2,1
3
3,1
2,1
0
2
2,1
2,1
2,1
3
1
1,1
2
6
5,1
1,5
0
6
2,2
1
3,1
6
5,1
3,3
1
3,1
2,2
0
0
1,1
2
1
3
3
3
3
0
3,2
1,2
0
0
3,2
2,2
1,1
0
4
3
3,1
0
3
3
4
2,2
3,1
2,1
3,1
0
4,1
3
3,1
3,1
4,1
1
1
0
3,1
1
0
3,1
5
3,1
2,1
1
4
1
0
0
3,1
2
1
3,1
3,1
0
1
1,1
3
0
0
0
2,1
2,1
0
3
2,1
0
0
0
3
3,1
2,1
1,1
4,1
3,2
4,1
1
5
3,2
0
0
4
4
2,2
1,1
4
3
1
1
4
4
4
2,2
4,1
4
3,1
2
2,1
4
0
0
4,1
2,3
2,2
2
1,1
4,1
2,1
2,1
4,1
2,2
0
4
4,1
2,1
4
2
2,2
0
0
0
2,1
4
1,1
2,1
4
0,1
2,1
0,1
4,1
2
0
1,1
2
2
2,1
1,2
3,1
2,1
1,1
0
4,1
3,2
1,4
0
2,2
3,1
0
2,2
2,2
2,1
3
0
3,1
2
2
3
3,1
2,1
2
2
3
3
3
2
3,1
3
1
1
3,2
3
1
4
4,1
3
4,1
1
Language Resources (Resources, Data, Knowledge Bases)
Reference Corpora
Syntax-Corpora(treebanks, dependency banks)
Semantics-Corpora
Discourse-Corpora
Parallel Corpora, Translation Memories
Speech-Corpora (raw speech data, labelled/annotated speech
data, speech dialogue data)
Multimedia and multimodal data
Language Models
Lexicons, Terminologies
Grammars
Thesauri, WordNets
Ontological Resources for World Knowledge (e.g. upper
models, Linked Data)
http://www.meta-net.eu
35

36. Simplified LR/LT Table (German)
0: very low
6: very high
http://www.meta-net.eu
36

37. Text Analytics
Coarse-Grained View
excellent
good
moderate
fragmentary
English (4.50)
Dutch (3.94)
French (3.71)
German (3.36)
Italian (3.50)
Spanish (3.77)
Basque (3.36)
Bulgarian (2.80)
Catalan (3.21)
Czech (3.29)
Danish (3.00)
Finnish (3.64)
Galician (3.43)
Greek (2.71)
Hungarian (3.79)
Norwegian (4.36)
Polish (4.07)
Portuguese (3.64)
Romanian (3.87)
Slovak (2.43)
Slovene (3.57)
Swedish (4.57)
weak or no support
Croatian (2.43)
Estonian (3.14)
Icelandic (3.50)
Irish (3.71)
Latvian (3.14)
Lithuanian (1.79)
Maltese (0.80)
Serbian (1.64)
In parenthesis: average scores of the grammatical analysis feature.
Several additional categories and features informed and influenced the overall ranking of a language in
one of the five categories. Neither the individual scores nor the avg. scores have been calibrated with
regard to the scores assigned to the LT support of other languages. These scores cannot be used for a
cross-language comparison alone; nevertheless, the avg. scores show how the authoring teams perceive
the state of the grammatical analysis category for their respective language themselves.
37

38. “Grammatical Analysis” Feature
Language
Basque
Bulgarian
Catalan
CroaBan
Czech
Danish
Dutch
English
Estonian
Finnish
French
Galician
German
Greek
Hungarian
Icelandic
Irish
Italian
Latvian
Lithuanian
Maltese
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Serbian
Slovak
Slovene
Spanish
Swedish
QuanBty
4
2.4
3
2
4
3
3.6
5
2.5
3.5
4
3
4
2
4.5
2
4
3.5
2.5
2
0.8
4
4
3
4
1
2
2.5
3.5
4.5
http://www.meta-net.eu
Availability
2.5
2
2.5
1.5
2
2
5.4
5
3.5
3.5
4
5
2.5
1.5
2
5.5
4
3
2
1.5
0.8
4.5
4.5
3
3.5
1
2
4
3
3.5
Quality
4
3.6
4
3.5
4
4
4.8
5.5
3.2
3.5
4
4
4
3.5
4
4
3
4
3
2.5
0.8
4
4.5
4
4
2.5
3
4.5
5.4
5
Coverage
4
3.6
4
3
4
4
3.6
4.5
2.8
4
4
4
4
3
4.5
3
3
5
3.5
2
0.8
4
4.5
4
3.6
2
2
3.5
4.5
4
Maturity
4
2.8
4
2
3
3
4.8
4.5
4
4
4
3
4
3
4
3.5
4
4
4
1.5
0.8
4.5
4
4.5
4.5
2
2
3
3.5
5
Sustainability
Adaptability
2.5
2.4
2.5
1
2
2
3.6
3
2.5
3.5
3
2
2.5
3
3
3.5
4
3
3
1
0.8
4.5
4
2.5
3.5
1.5
3
3
3
5
2.5
2.8
2.5
4
4
3
1.8
4
3.5
3.5
3
3
2.5
3
4.5
3
4
2
4
2
0.8
5
3
4.5
4
1.5
3
4.5
3.5
5
Average
3.36
2.80
3.21
2.43
3.29
3.00
3.94
4.50
3.14
3.64
3.71
3.43
3.36
2.71
3.79
3.50
3.71
3.50
3.14
1.79
0.80
4.36
4.07
3.64
3.87
1.64
2.43
3.57
3.77
4.57
Level
of
support
(Text
AnalyBcs)
fragmentary
fragmentary
fragmentary
weak/no
fragmentary
fragmentary
moderate
good
weak/no
fragmentary
moderate
fragmentary
moderate
fragmentary
fragmentary
weak/no
weak/no
moderate
weak/no
weak/no
weak/no
fragmentary
fragmentary
fragmentary
fragmentary
weak/no
fragmentary
fragmentary
moderate
fragmentary
38

39. Across Categories
q
q
q
q
The four area rankings of the 30 languages on the five point scale
(from “excellent support” to “weak/no support”) take many different
features and factors into account.
The “grammatical analysis” data are only one single piece of the
puzzle – the piece that is closest to Computational Morphology.
Let’s have a look at the individual White Papers and the languages as
they are ranked – from “good support” to “weak/no” support.
The following ranking is in terms of Text Analytics, the excerpts
taken from the White Papers refer to morphological tools.
http://www.meta-net.eu
39

40. Good Support
q
q
q
q
Only language that is considered to have “good support” in terms of
Text Analytics is English.
In comparison to certain other languages and language families, the
morphology of English is usually considered as being rather simple
and straight-forward.
Many robust and precise off-the-shelf technologies exist.
This is most probably the main reason why the authors of the white
paper on English do not discuss morphology components at all, nor
any related issues or challenges.
http://www.meta-net.eu
40

41. Moderate Support
q
q
q
q
Same trend in this category concerning morphological tools.
Authors mainly discuss other research and technology gaps,
mentioning the existence of, for example, “medium- to high-quality
software for basic text analysis, such as tools for morphological
analysis and syntactic parsing” (German),
Some authors mention morphology on a more superficial level
(Italian, Spanish) or not at all (Dutch).
The authors of the white paper on French emphasise that large
programmes were set up (1994–2000; 2003–2005) to build a set of
basic technologies for French, from spoken and written language
resources to spoken and written language processing systems.
http://www.meta-net.eu
41

42. Fragmentary Support 1/4
q
q
q
q
q
16 languages only have fragmentary support in Text Analytics.
The respective authoring teams report the existence of one or two
morphological tools per language.
Clear tendency: these tools have limited functionality and a long
history including an unclear copyright situation (Hungarian).
Neither freely nor immediately available (Danish, Romanian).
However, these tools are usually employed in the large office suites
(MS Office, Open Office), localisation frameworks or national search
engines (Norwegian, Czech, Slovak).
http://www.meta-net.eu
42

43. Fragmentary Support 2/4
q
q
q
q
Key contributing factor that only few morphological components
exist: rich morphological systems; high degree of inflection; lack of
morphological distinction for certain nominal cases.
These linguistic properties make morphological processing, as well
as all approaches based primarily on statistics, a challenge (Basque,
Polish, Slovene and other languages).
Special characters and encoding systems are mentioned for
languages with alphabets that go beyond plain ASCII: processing
words when diacritics are missing (web, email) is a challenge.
Experts demand more robust error detection algorithms (Czech).
Important observation (Basque, Greek): algorithms and approaches
developed for English cannot be directly transferred to other
languages.
http://www.meta-net.eu
43

44. Fragmentary Support 3/4
q
q
q
Languages spoken in smaller countries usually do not receive as
much attention and research funding as larger languages in which
typically also a larger base of researchers works on building actual
technologies, maybe even breaking new ground (Greek).
Hungarian: a lack of synchronisation between parallel efforts to
build morphological processors lead to substantial friction loss. This
is why several morphological parsers for Hungarian exist but they
use conflicting and incompatible formalisms.
Some authors discuss related technologies such as, for example, elearning tools and systems for second language learners that employ
complex morphological components (Czech).
http://www.meta-net.eu
44

45. Fragmentary Support 4/4
q
q
q
q
Portugal set up a project in 2005 to enable the development of a set
of linguistic resources and components to support the processing of
Portuguese. Outcome: large corpus and tools for tokenisation,
morphosyntactic tagging, inflection analysis, and lemmatisation.
Slovakia set up a project to provide processing of Slovak for
linguistic research purposes within the National Research and
Development Programme. Outcome: tools and data sets that include
processors and morphologically annotated corpora.
French (1994-2000) had a clear head-start over Portuguese and
Slovak in addition to a longer, more established research tradition in
this area, which is why it was ranked higher.
The Slovak experts conclude that, while certain morphological tools
do exist, “those must be further developed and supported.”
http://www.meta-net.eu
45

46. Weak or No Support 1/2
q
q
q
q
q
This category concerns eight languages.
A small or very small number of morphological tools or components
exist (Irish) and are used, even in well known applications, but they
are neither freely available nor accessible for research purposes.
Tools are based on very simple approaches that rely on word lists
(Lithuanian, Estonian, Croatian).
Several of these tools have been in development since the 1980ies
and are under the control of companies. Researchers often use ispell
or aspell (open source) as a technological fallback solution.
The complex morphology of languages is mentioned in almost all
cases along with the statement that morphology processing must be
further developed (Icelandic, Estonian, Croatian, Maltese, Serbian).
http://www.meta-net.eu
46

47. Weak or No Support 2/2
q
q
q
q
Authors demand more development for basic morphological tools.
Perceived as very important: to design and model approaches to the
specific linguistic properties of a language without trying to adapt an
approach developed for English (Serbian, Estonian).
One such step is to set up specific language technology programmes,
as has been done, among others, in France, Slovakia and Portugal.
In 2000, the Icelandic government set up a national programme
with the aim of supporting institutions and companies in creating
resources for Icelandic. Outcome: several projects, huge impact on
the national field. Among its results are a full-form morphological
database of Modern Icelandic inflections, a balanced
morphosyntactically tagged corpus and a training model for datadriven POS taggers and an improved spell checker.
http://www.meta-net.eu
47

48. Summary
q
q
q
q
q
q
q
Solid computational morphology tools only exist for a handful of
European languages – i.e., those with many speakers (and funding).
The smaller the language, the less tools exist.
“Fragmentary” or “weak/no support”: 24 of the 30 languages – very few
tools; very limited functionality; availability is a problem.
In terms of the full NLP stack, computational morphology cannot be
taken for granted, it is by no means a “solved problem”.
More original research off the beaten track (i.e., English) needed.
More coordination, synergies and research transfer between the
languages needed.
France, Iceland, Portugal, Slovakia show that large, dedicated funding
programmes are needed to support the development of basic LRs/LTs.
http://www.meta-net.eu
48

49. The META-NET Strategic Research Agenda for Multilingual Europe
Strategic Research Agenda
http://www.meta-net.eu
49

50. Three Ingredients
Appropriate
Actors
Appropriate
Programme
Research &
Commercialisation
Vision & Agenda
Appropriate
Support
Funding
http://www.meta-net.eu
50

51. Three Vision Groups
q
Translation and Localisation (technical documentation, official
bulletins, GUI localisation, games, services etc.)
§ Target stakeholders: large users of translation services, (machine)
translation, software companies, game companies, localisation industry
q
Media and Information Services (audiovisual sector, news,
digital libraries, portals, search engines etc.)
§ Target stakeholders: media industries, search engine providers, archives
q
Interactive Systems (mobile assistance, dialogue translation, call
centres, etc.)
§ Target stakeholders: mobile software and service providers, telecom
industry, call centres
http://www.meta-net.eu
51

52. Vision Group Meetings
q
Vision Group Translation and Localisation
§ July 23, 2010
§ September 28, 2010
§ April 7/8, 2011
q
Vision Group Media and Information Services
§ September 10, 2010
§ October 15, 2010
§ April 1, 2011
q
Berlin, Germany
Brussels, Belgium
Prague, Czech Republic
Paris, France
Barcelona, Spain
Vienna, Austria
Vision Group Interactive Systems
§ September 10, 2010
§ October 5, 2010
§ March 28, 2011
http://www.meta-net.eu
Paris, France
Prague, Czech Republic
Rotterdam, The Netherlands
52

53. Planning Process
Expert meeting
minutes
Expert meeting
minutes
Vision Group
Media and
Information
Services Report
Vision Group
Interactive
Systems Report
Expert meeting
minutes
Vision
Paper
Strategic
Research
Agenda
Vision Group
Translation and
Localisation
Report
2010
Priority
Themes
Paper
2011
2012

54. Planning Process: Documents
Expert meeting
minutes
This document is part of the Network of Excellence “Multilingual Europe Technology Alliance (META-NET)”,
co- funded by the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission through the T4ME grant agreement no.: 249119.
LT 2020
A Network of Excellence forging the
Vision and Priority Themes for
Language Technology Research
in Europe until the Year 2020
Multilingual Europe Technology Alliance
Expert meeting
minutes
Vision Document
Vision Group Translation and Localisation
Results of first two meetings
Editors:
Dissemination Level:
Public
Date:
Towards the META-NET Strategic Research Agenda
Aljoscha Burchardt, Georg Rehm
3 December 2010
Expert meeting
minutes
Vision Group
Media and
Information
Services Report
This document is part of the Network of Excellence “Multilingual Europe Technology Alliance (META-NET)”,
co- funded by the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission through the T4ME grant agreement no.: 249119.
A Network of Excellence forging the
Priority
Themes
Paper
Do you
have com
with reg
me
ard to the nts, ideas or
sugges
Please
conten
tions
send the
t of this
discuss
docum
them onl m to office@
ent?
meta-n
ine: htt
et.eu or
p://ww
w.meta
-net.eu
/sra.
The development of this paper has been funded by the Seventh Framework Programme and the ICT Policy Support Programme of the European Commission under contracts T4ME (Grant Agreement 249119), CESAR (Grant Agreement 271022), METANET4U (Grant Agreement
270893) and META-NORD (Grant Agreement 270899).
Multilingual Europe Technology Alliance
Vision Document
Vision Group Interactive Systems:
Results of first two meetings
www.meta-net.eu
office@meta-net.eu
T: +49 30 23895 1833
Editors:
Joseph Mariani, Bernardo Magnini
Dissemination Level:
Public
Date:
28 December 2010
Vision Group
Interactive
Systems Report
This document is part of the Network of Excellence “Multilingual Europe Technology Alliance (META-NET)”,
co- funded by the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission through the T4ME grant agreement no.: 249119.
A Network of Excellence forging the
Multilingual Europe Technology Alliance
The Future European Multilingual
Information Society
Vision
Paper
Vision Paper for a Strategic Research Agenda
Vision Document
Vision Group Media and Information Services:
Results of first two meetings
Editors:
Maria Koutsombogera, Stelios Piperidis
Dissemination Level:
Public
Date:
10 November 2010
Vision Group
Translation and
Localisation
Report
2010
“People can’t share knowledge
if they don’t speak a common language.”
Davenport, Thomas H, and Laurence Prusak, Working Knowledge:
How Organizations Manage What They Know, Harvard Business School,
Boston, 1997, p. 98.
Join the discussion at
www.meta-et.eu/forum
2011
Strategic
Research
Agenda
2012

55. Preparation of the SRA
q
q
q
Strategic Research Agendas of other initiatives were screened.
Many suggestions as input from Vision Group members.
We discussed procedures, input and structure of the SRA in four
meetings of the META Technology Council.
§ Brussels, Belgium, November 16, 2010
§ Venice, Italy, May 25, 2011
§ Berlin, Germany, September 30, 2011
§ Brussels, Belgium, June 19, 2012
q
Additional input in talks, meetings, workshops, discussions, etc.
§ Example: Three HLT Expert Meetings organised by the EC (end of 2011)
q
Almost 200 experts contributed to the SRA (54% from industry;
46% from research; 4% from national/international institutions).
http://www.meta-net.eu
55

56. Strategic Research Agenda
q
q
q
q
q
Addresses the problems we identified
when preparing the white papers.
Three priority research themes and
application/innovation scenarios.
Can put Europe ahead of its
competitors in this technology area.
>190 contributors; >2 years.
Presented and discussed at 83
conferences and major workshops.
q
Final version ready on Dec. 1, 2012.
q
http://www.meta-net.eu/sra
http://www.meta-net.eu
56

57. SRA: Contents – Brief Glimpse
q
q
Set the stage and describe the European situation, the needs and the LT
research and industry.
Discuss the state of IT, predictions
and mega-trends.
q
Our technology vision for 2020.
q
Select and specify priority themes.
q
q
Suggest a model for speeding up
innovation.
Outline proposals for the organisation
of research and innovation.
http://www.meta-net.eu
57

58. Priority Themes: 3 + 2
q
We decided on priority themes that (a) support technology progress,
(b) lead to solutions that European society needs and (c) solutions
from which European industry will benefit as users or as providers.
§ Translingual Cloud
§ Social Intelligence and e-Participation
§ Socially-Aware Interactive Assistants
q
Two additional themes:
§ European Service Platform for
Language Technologies
§ Core Technologies for Language
Analysis and Production
http://www.meta-net.eu
58

59. PT1: Translingual Cloud
q
q
q
Europe has a big need for translations of publishable quality.
Focus on high-quality translation.
New research paradigms
§ Inclusion of professional translators into the
research process
§ Inclusion of technologists into research on
human translation processes
q
Different technological approaches
§ Stronger emphasis on the properties of
individual languages
§ A central role for semantics
q
Methods for specific genres & domains
http://www.meta-net.eu
59

60. Priority Research Theme 1: Translingual Cloud
Written (twitter, blog, article, newspaper,
text with/without metadata etc.) or
spoken input (spontaneous spoken
language, video/audio, multiple speakers)
Extending
translation with
semantic data and
linked open data
Modular combination
of analysis, transfer
and generation
models
From very fast but lower
quality to slower but very
high quality (including
instant quality upgrades)
Services and Technologies:
Automatic translation and
interpretation
Language checking
Post-editing
Workbenches for creative
translations
Novel translation and authoring
workflows
Quality assurance
Computer-supported human
translation
Multilingual content production and
text authoring
Trusted service centre (privacy,
confidentiality, security of source
data)
Exploiting strong
monolingual analysis
and generation methods
and resources
Multiple target
formats
Domain, task and
genre specialisation
models
Applications:
Crosslingual communication,
translation and search
Real-time subtitling, voice-over
generation and translating speech
from live events
Mobile interactive interpretation
Any
device
Target groups: European citizen, language
professional, organisations, companies, European
institutions, software applications
Multilingual content production
(media, web, technical, legal
documents)
Showcases: translingual spaces for
ambient translation
Multiple target
formats
Single access
point

61. PT2: Social Intelligence
q
q
q
q
q
q
q
q
Better decisions by monitoring social media
Inclusion of citizens into collective decision processes
Opinion formation, consensus building, decision making
Evolution of new solutions
New forms of democracy: e-democracy,
massive participation, transparency
Dialogues and debates across language
boundaries and across parties, political
alliances, social classes
Better than binary voting
Documented transparent
decision processes
http://www.meta-net.eu
61

62. Priority Research Theme 2: Social Intelligence and e-Participation
Mapping large, heterogeneous,
unstructured volumes of online
content to structured, actionable
representations
From shallow to deep,
from coarse-grained to
detailed processing
techniques
Making language
technologies interoperable
with knowledge representation and the semantic web
“Semantification” of the
web: tight integration
with the Semantic Web
and Linked Open Data
Services and Technologies:
especially social media, comments,
blogs, forums
decision-relevant information
sentiment analysis and opinion mining
including the temporal dimension)
cues
from arbitrary online content
visualising discussions and opinion
statements
support
Applications:
Make use of the
wisdom of the
crowds
and processes; modeling evolution of
opinions
collective deliberation and
e-participation
wide deliberation on pressing issues
Unleashing social intelligence by
detecting and monitoring opinions,
demands, needs and problems
-
analysis technologies
Target groups: European citizen,
European institutions, discussion
participants, companies
Improved
efficiency and
quality of decision
processes
Understanding influence
diffusion across social media

63. Priority Research Theme 3: Socially-Aware Interactive Assistants
ments, any
vocabulary
recovery,
selfassessment
Multilingual
capabilities
Interacting
naturally
with and in
groups
Include human-computer,
human-artificial agent and
computer-mediated humanhuman communication
Learning
and
forgetting
information
Adaptable to the
user’s needs and
preferences and
the environment
Services and Technologies:
recognition
understanding
inter-dependencies
and synthesis, providing expressive
voices
incremental conversational speech
priority themes
models of human communication
Applications:
dialogue systems
modalities (visual, tactile, haptic)
environment
Proactive,
self-aware,
user-adaptable
Interacts naturally with
humans, in any
language and modality
Can be personalised to
individual communication
abilities including special needs
verbal/non-verbal behaviour, social
context
Can learn incrementally
from all interactions and
other sources of information

64. Providers of operational and research technologies and services
National
Language
Institutions
Language
Service
Providers
Priority Research Theme 1:
Translingual
Cloud
Language
Processing
Language
Technology
Providers
Universities
Priority Research Theme 2:
Social Intelligence
& e-Participation
European
Institutions
Priority Research Theme 3:
Socially Aware
Interactive Assistants
European Service Platform for Language Technologies
(Cloud or Sky Computing Platform)
Language
Understanding
Text
analytics
Multilingual
technologies
Text
generation
Information and
relation extraction
Knowledge
Emotion/
Sentiment
Language
checking
Sentiment
analysis
Named entity
recognition
Other
companies (SMEs,
startups etc.)
Summarisation
Knowledge access
and management
Data protection
Tools
Data Sets
Resources
Components
Metadata
Standards
Interfaces
APIs
Catalogues
Quality Assurance
Data Import/Export
Input/Output
Storage
Performance
Availability
Scalability
Interfaces (web, speech, mobile etc.)
Beneficiaries/users of the platform
European
Institutions
Research
Centres
Public
Administrations
European
Citizens
Enterprises
LT User
Industries
Universities
Features
Research
Centres

65. Core Resources & Technologies
Icelandic
Icelandic
Finnish
Finnish
Norwegian
Norwegian
Estonian
Swedish
Estonian
Swedish
Lithuanian
Danish
Irish
Latvian
Polish
Latvian
Lithuanian
Danish
Irish
Slovak
English
English
Polish
Dutch
German
Dutch
Romanian
Slovak
Czech
German
Galician
Hungarian
Slovene
Croatian
Basque
Portuguese
Croatian
French
Serbian
Basque
Serbian
Catalan
Hungarian
Slovene
Romanian
French
Galician
Czech
Bulgarian
Bulgarian
Italian
Catalan
Portuguese
Spanish
Greek
Spanish
Italian
Greek
Maltese
http://www.meta-net.eu
Maltese
65

66. META-NET
Conclusions and Next Steps
http://www.meta-net.eu
66

67. Conclusions and Next Steps
q
q
q
q
q
q
The White Paper Series clearly shows that Computational Morphology
cannot and must not be considered a “solved problem”.
Quite the contrary: several good technologies exist only for a small
number of languages; many languages lack adequate support.
The research community needs to team up to discuss synergies and to
boost research and technology transfer between its languages.
The goal should be adequate, precise, robust, scalable and freely
available morphology components for all European languages.
New challenges and opportunities: real-time processing, web-scale
processing of and training on documents using big data technologies
such as Hadoop, interoperability and standardisation of data formats,
morphology as a service etc.
The sophisticated applications foreseen in our META-NET SRA are
critically dependent on reliable and precise basic processing
components — including computational morphology!
http://www.meta-net.eu
67

68. Conclusions and Next Steps
q
q
q
q
q
q
q
q
Europe is extremely interested in and passionate about its languages.
Our Strategic Research Agenda for LT research and innovation can put
Europe ahead of its competitors in this technology area.
Provides useful and attractive solutions to European society, at the same
time creating huge business opportunities for European industry.
Now is the time to move forward with a continent-wide, systematic push
and to invest in strategic research. A modest investment is required.
We are very confident that we can help build applications that break
down language barriers in Europe and beyond.
This push will generate a countless number of opportunities.
This year is important: H2020 and CEF can provide sufficient resources
to make our visions for Europe’s citizens and economy a reality.
META-FORUM 2013, September 19/20, Berlin, Germany.
http://www.meta-net.eu
68

69. http://www.meta-net.eu
Connecting Europe for New Horizons
Vision Group
Translation and Localisation
Vision Group
Interactive Systems
Economics and Technology — Berlin, Germany
2010
http://www.meta-forum.eu
Register now!
META-NET Website
Vision Group
Media and Information Services
META-FORUM 2013 — Connecting Europe for New Horizons is an
international conference on powerful language technologies for the multilingual
information society, the data value chain and the information market place. The
two special themes of this year's edition of the conference are Big Data Text
Analytics and Multilingual Web Services for Multilingual Europe.
2011
Highlights
Keynote lectures by Daniel Marcu (Chief Science Officer, SDL) and
Wolfgang Wahlster (CEO, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, DFKI)
Horizon 2020 and Connecting Europe Facility (CEF): Current State of Play
Dynamic Discussions on:
Technologies for the Multilingual Web
MT for Professionals
Services for Multilingual Europe
Needs of Europe's Languages
Connecting Towards New Horizons
Quality Translation and Innovation
New Stakeholders: GALA (Globalization and Localization Association); NPLD
(Network to Promote Linguistic Diversity); Council of Europe Committee of Experts on the
Charter of Regional and Minority Languages
Towards a European Language Technology Platform
Panel discussions
Awards Ceremony: META Prize and META Seal of Recognition
META Exhibition (industry and research exhibition – software demos and posters)
2012
Language White Paper Series
2013
Strategic
Research
Agenda
META-FORUM 2013 will be held jointly by META-NET and the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, co-organised with MultilingualWeb-LT, QTLaunchPad and LT Berlin.
Horizon 2020
Conne
Deliverin
2014-2020
Transport
Energy
Connect
http://www.meta-net.eu

70. Q/A
Acknowledgements: This work would not have been possible
without the dedication and commitment of our colleagues
Aljoscha Burchardt, Kathrin Eichler, Tina Klüwer, Arle Lommel,
Felix Sasaki and Hans Uszkoreit (all DFKI), the 60 member
organisations of the META-NET network of excellence, the ca.
70 members of the Vision Groups, the ca. 30 members of the
META Technology Council, the more than 200 authors of and
contributors to the META-NET Language White Paper Series
and the ca. 200 representatives from industry and research who
contributed to the META-NET Strategic Research Agenda.
Thank you!
META-FORUM 2013
September 19/20, Berlin
http://www.meta-forum.eu
http://www.meta-net.eu
http://www.facebook.com/META.Alliance
Connecting Europe for New Horizons
Economics and Technology — Berlin, Germany
http://www.meta-forum.eu
Register now!
META-FORUM 2013 — Connecting Europe for New Horizons is an
international conference on powerful language technologies for the multilingual
information society, the data value chain and the information market place. The
two special themes of this year's edition of the conference are Big Data Text
Analytics and Multilingual Web Services for Multilingual Europe.
Highlights
Keynote lectures by Daniel Marcu (Chief Science Officer, SDL) and
Wolfgang Wahlster (CEO, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, DFKI)
Horizon 2020 and Connecting Europe Facility (CEF): Current State of Play
Dynamic Discussions on:
Technologies for the Multilingual Web
MT for Professionals
Services for Multilingual Europe
Needs of Europe's Languages
Connecting Towards New Horizons
Quality Translation and Innovation
New Stakeholders: GALA (Globalization and Localization Association); NPLD
(Network to Promote Linguistic Diversity); Council of Europe Committee of Experts on the
Charter of Regional and Minority Languages
Towards a European Language Technology Platform
Panel discussions
Awards Ceremony: META Prize and META Seal of Recognition
META Exhibition (industry and research exhibition – software demos and posters)
META-FORUM 2013 will be held jointly by META-NET and the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, co-organised with MultilingualWeb-LT, QTLaunchPad and LT Berlin.
http://www.meta-net.eu
70