Post on 27-Jan-2016
description
Denmark in Europe: Benchmarking HLT Research & Development
EUROMAP National Seminar - Copenhagen30 April 2003
Rose LockwoodDirector of Research, Bowne Global Solutions
2
The EUROMAP Final Report: Benchmarking HLT Progress
COVERING:
• State-of-the-Art in HLT• The Shape and Evolution of the Market• Driving Next-Generation HLT: Policy Imperatives• The HLT Scorecard
– HLT Benchmark
– HLT Opportunity Index
• Conclusions & Recommendations
3
State-of-the-Art in HLT
• What is HLT and who are the companies making it happen?
• Segmentation of the technologies• Introduction to applications and opportunities for
technology transfer• Review of types of HLT players in Europe• Snap-shot profiles illustrative of the rich HLT
scene in Europe• Comprehensive directory of European researchers
and suppliers (to be published separately)– Showing focus and types of applications
– Languages covered by tools and products
4
Multimodal, Multilingual Products & Services
componentwareSPEECH NLP
Interface & Interaction Knowledge Processing
X-Lingual Applications
From components to complex solutions: the focus of HLT applications
5
Grounded in the basics: suppliers of Componentware and Resources
• Neurosoft (Greece) – Greek language components for text mining
• Polderland Language & Speech Technology (Netherlands) - Core components for multiple languages
• Connexor (Finland) – Embedded multilingual language analysers
• Daedalus (Spain) - Document processing tools for Castilian
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Innovators - Interface and Interaction
• Telisma (France) – Speech recognition for telecommunications voice services
• Auralog (France) Speech technology for the language learning industry
• Sympalog (Germany) – State-of-the-art voice dialog systems
• Loquendo (Italy): A global speech technology powerhouse
• Rhetorical Systems (UK) - High quality speech synthesis in multiple languages
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Innovators in Cross-Lingual Applications
• ESTeam (Sweden) - Resource-driven translation automation
• Sail Labs Technology (Austria) - An advanced language understanding agenda
• Synthema (Italy) – Tools for multilingual knowledge management
• Systran (France) – Industrial-strength machine translation
• Aixplain (Germany) – Cross-lingual solutions for speech and text
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Innovators in HLT-based Knowledge Processing
• Ankiro (Denmark) – User-centric dialogue and knowledge robots
• Language & Computing (Belgium) - Semantics for medical knowledge
• Xtramind Technologies (Germany) – Intelligent enterprise information processing
• Knowledge Concepts (Netherlands) - Boosting cross-lingual access to corporate content
• Wordmap (UK) – Enterprise Taxonomy Management Systems
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Ankiro - Products based on (English) language tools and databases
• Advanced products that promote effective communication, information searching and knowledge management.
• Dialog robots used for:– Guidance (e.g. as guides on web sites)– Support (e.g. as Call centre robots and FAQ robots)– Entertainment (e.g. chat robots)
• Search engines and crawlers include:– Web search engines (available both as index based search and as full-
text search)– Site search engines (searches on a company's web page) – Intranet search engines (searches through all of a company's
databases) – Lotus search engines (plug-ins for effective searches in Lotus
applications)
10Original Chart Source: Geoffrey Moore, The Chasm Group
components
niche products
embedded solutions
Market Take-up
Crossing the Chasm with Language Technology
2nd Generation LangTech:Advanced Solutions
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0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
1400
1600
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004
Rev
enue
s ($
m)
-10%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
Yea
r on
yea
r gr
owth
(%
)
Total revenues
Year on year growth
CAGR 21%
Source: Datamonitor, Voice Business Quarterly Update (Q3 2002)
0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
Source: Steve McClure, IDC (2002)
speech
language
TOTAL HLT product market circa $2B in 2004
Market Forecast: Speech and Language Applications
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Policy - Background and Evolution
• How important is HLT from a policy perspective?• How has public investment supported the
domain, and • Who are the Showcase Labs?• How has public-sector investment in HLT evolved
over the years? • National and EU programme timelines
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niche products
components
basic research
embedded solutions
2002Funding for 1st Generation LangTech
1982 1990 1995 2000
Programme Support and HLT Transfer to Market
New tech-transfer cycle based on advanced HLT Research
Advanced LangTech
FP6 and new national, regional programmes2003
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HLT Research
New Business Formation
Access to Key Channels
Supply-side Readiness
ICT InfrastructureHLT Language
Breadth
InnovationPotential
RTDEnvironment
Trade Competitiveness
TechnologyTechnologyDevelopmentDevelopment
Demand-sideDemand-sideFactorsFactors
Supply-sideSupply-sideFactorsFactors
Are we ready for the next generation?Benchmarking HLT in Europe
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Benchmarking Method
• Measuring HLT maturity:– Factors include research and tech-transfer record, rates-of-
investment (at national level, both public and private), breadth of language coverage
• Measuring HLT opportunity:– Factors include infrastructure and business environment
• Combining data from varied sources to establish a useful benchmarking scale– HCID/World Economic Forum survey - uses a 1-to-7 rating scale
(1=poor, 7=excellent) for a wide range of questions
– Other studies normalised to this scale (Innovation Scorecard, EITO ICT infrastructure data, EuroStat, OECD, EUROMAP HLT maturity, etc.)
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How to measure HLT maturity
• Expert opinion/knowledge of the research scene• Review of activities, actors, players:
– suppliers
– projects
– researchers
• Review of quasi-quantitative measures including– projects-per-country (based on hltcentral database and other
sources for pre-FP4/5 programmes)
– experts/individuals with HLT focus per country (based on CDB and ELSNET contacts list)
– “citations” per country - from proceedings of major HLT conferences (EACL, ACL, COLING, MT Summit, Applied ACL, TMI, CLAW, Eurospeech, ICSLP, LREC)
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Consolidated Results: HLT Benchmark + Opportunity = HLT Scorecard
3 .1
4 .7
6 .3
2 .5 4 .0 5 .5
HLT Benchmark
HL
T O
pp
ort
un
ity
GermanyNetherlands
FinlandUK
Sweden
Ireland DenmarkFrance
Belgium
Spain
LEADERSPROMISING
READYFOR
TAKE-OFF
EU-14
Greece
Austria
Italy
Portugal
STRUCTURAL LIMITS
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Key Findings: Denmark
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
HLT re
sear
ch
RTD env
ironm
ent
Lang
uage
bre
adth
New b
usine
ss fo
rmat
ion
Acces
s to
chan
nels
Supply
-side
read
iness
Trade
com
petiti
vene
ss
ICT in
frastr
uctu
re
Inno
vatio
n po
tent
ial
HLT S
CORECARD
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Key Findings: Denmark vs EU average
0
1
2
3
4
5
6HLT research
RTD environment
Language breadth
New business formation
Access to channels
Supply-side readiness
Trade competitiveness
ICT infrastructure
Innovation potential
HLT SCORECARD
EU-14 Denmark
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HLT Indexes: Denmark
-
1.0
2.0
3.0
4.0
5.0
6.0
7.0
Speech Text/NLP Public Sector Industry Multilingual Minority
HLT RTD &Tech Transfer
HLT RTDInvestment
HLT LanguageBreadth
EU Average
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Scorecard: Comparing Denmark to EU Leaders
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
HLT re
sear
ch
RTD env
ironm
ent
Lang
uage
brea
dth
New b
usine
ss fo
rmat
ion
Acces
s to
chan
nels
Supply
-side
read
iness
Trade
com
petiti
vene
ss
ICT in
frastr
uctu
re
Inno
vatio
n po
tent
ial
HLT S
CORECARD
Germany Netherlands Finland UK Denmark
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Denmark: Key Findings
• Denmark scores to the EU average on measures of robustness in HLT research
• Strong tradition of text and NLP applications, and speech research is well represented.
• Active professional translation community, including a dedicated machine translation system for processing patent documents between English and Danish.
• Five major HLT research centres, one of which acts as a national centre of excellence for language technology.
• Denmark has about seven HLT suppliers, though not all of them are dedicated language-technology focused companies
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Denmark: Strengths
• Traditionally export-focused country with strong multilingual capabilities
• Excellent cross-border facilitator• Well-trained R&D base in language and speech
technology• Strong EU project participation, and a leading
role in regional Nordic language technology activities
• Healthy business innovation environment and excellent levels of public infrastructure readiness
• Basic technology components for Danish now exist, and research is carried out on other languages.
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Denmark: Challenges
• Ensuring that the Danish language community can benefit from speech and language technologies appropriate to Denmark’s high degree of readiness
• Industry involvement in HLT research is scarce, tech-transfer weak– Lack of large-scale high technology channels that can facilitate the
transfer of language and speech technologies to market
• Small local market opportunity– While 95% of the population are Danish speaking, the language is
highly localised, and not used widely elsewhere
• The transfer of first generation language technology to the marketplace is still in waiting mode
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Guide to Action
3 .1
4 .7
6 .3
2 .5 4 .0 5 .5
HLT Benchmark
HL
T O
pp
ort
un
ity
EU-14HLT lagging due to constraints of the
environment and under-investment in R&D
Infrastructure, investment and national policy
support urgently needed
Strong correlation Strong correlation between Opportunity between Opportunity and HLT Benchmarkand HLT Benchmark
Strong exploitation potential: tech-
transfer support key
World-Class knowledge-based products and services
DE/NE/FI/UK
IE/IT/AT
FR/BE/ES
GR/PT
Role for stronger HLT RTD and tech-transfer to match
opportunities
Boosting HLT research will pay off due to market
potential
SV/DK
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General Recommendations
EU-level• Collaboration at national level: HLT in the ERA• Structures for visioneering• Digital Infrastructure for HLT
– “Infrastructure Funds” for language technology
Danish national level• Need for a continued focus on cross-border
collaboration to ensure the future vitality of the Danish HLT community– within the Nordic Region, and in the wider European context.
• Greater effort at transfer opportunities– high Internet penetration and networked educational system– e-government, education and training may provide new opportunities for
exploiting language technology in an inherently small market.
Thanks!
Rose LockwoodDirector of Research, Bowne Global Solutions
Cambridge+44 1223 350 340
rose.lockwood@equipe.co.uk