MLi – Towards a MultiLingual Data &

Services infrastructure

1

The consortium

2

INMARK

Spain

ATOS

Spain

ESTEAM

Sweden

TILDE

Latvia

Evaluations and Language

Resources Distribution

Agency

France

Dublin City University

Ireland

The University of

Sheffield

United Kingdom

Objectives

• MLi aims at laying down the foundations of a comprehensive European Multilingual data & services infrastructure. In short, it will provide:

– The functional, technical and operational Specifications of a Pan-European Multilingual data & services infrastructure,

– A multiannual roll-out Plan of the MLi and its constituent services, with individual stages of development and corresponding cost/effort estimates,

– A sustainable Governance model for the MLi, as well as terms and conditions for the establishment of an organisation tasked with its administration, operation and maintenance,

– The statements of Commitment of relevant groups of stakeholders, to provide active support for the deployment of the MLi and its usage.

3

Multiplicity of Benefits

MLi project objective is to support different target audiences as follows:

• Public and private services providers: provision online content-rich services available in several EU languages, facilitating the exchange of information.

• Language Technology services suppliers: access to multi-language facilities enabling to build, customise and run multi-national services of common interest.

• Research centres and Language Technology vendors: R&D breakthroughs and innovations empowered by language resources and services.

• Policy analysts and decision makers: arguments and evidence for advocating for a more extensive involvement in fostering and supporting the Language Technology ecosystem.

4

5

Jan

2014

Inception phase

Jun

2014

First iteration

May

2015

Second iteration

Oct

2015

Final integration

Project starts

Project ends

•Common vision

& goals

•Operational

work plan

•Operational

deployment

•Architecture, layers

& components and

the associated

scenarios & options

•Principles of

service mgmt & ops

•Targets and 1st

round of

consultation

•Design and

specifications

•Scoping,

planning and

costing

•Setup for

service mgmt &

ops

•Finalization of

technical & service

components &

associated

management

structure

•Roll-out planning

and costing

Workplan

Advantages of LT

• Scale-to-fit. Language Technology can be dimensioned with the increasing needs for translation capacities either by providing more computing power or by deploying new translation services handling various types of content or new languages.

• Interoperability & standards. The growing number of standards within LT fosters greater interoperability and lowers the barrier for deployment. MLi will comply with the well-established frameworks for interoperability backed by the ISA programme .

• Multilinguality. Language processing applications (search, mining, writing, speech, translation, etc) depend on a basic infrastructure. These are tedious to develop and to maintain, and expensive, since they are required for every single language. Therefore processing text works only okay in English, less so in major languages, and badly in lesser spoken languages. MLi will provide the basic functionality required to process unstructured content.

6

Advantages of LT

• Machine translation / Automated translation. Automated Translation (AT) is a core element to enable pan-European Digital service infrastructures (DSIs). It plays an important role in the realisation of a digital single market without language barriers and has significant potential for savings in translation costs. AT is a prerequisite for pan-European digital services to serve administrations, businesses and citizens in their own language.

• Language resources. Language Resources (LRs) are a key component within the Human Language Technology (HLT) community and a prominent point towards the preservation of both linguistic and cultural heritage in Europe and worldwide. LRs are in one way or another behind most language processing technology and, in particular, behind the development and improvement of Machine Translation. Thus, having a clear understanding of what exists, what is under creation and what needs to be developed is one of the missions endeavoured by MLI.

7

How can MLi add value to

existing services?

8

Public Administration

• Translation technologies, in particular real time

translation, are important to support and foster the

communication between citizens of different

countries and cultures, governments and the EU.

• Optimization of content coming from various public

sources, including social media, software log files, or

sensor and GPS signals, can be reached with the

support of intelligent content technologies.

• Diminution of the “impersonal tech oriented”

provision of services and enhancement of

accessibility and user experience can be obtained

with the support of Speech interaction technology.

MLi will provide the foundations of a comprehensive European

Multilingual data & services infrastructure to support these

technologies.

How can MLi add value to

existing services?

9

MT@EC

• MT@EC, the machine translation system

operated by DG Translation of the

European Commission, can translate

documents but also provides multilingual

support to various DSIs, with the intention

of scale up and include more data.

• It intends to offer a service of quality and a

system that can be adapted to different

domains.

MLi can help MT@EC to determine the multilinguality

requirements of DSIs and to find and get hold of language

resources that would be useful for domain adaptation.

How can MLi add value to

existing services?

10

DSIs: Europeana

• Europeana is built on descriptive metadata which

comes from a broad, heterogeneous network of

content providers. Currently the metadata is supplied

in 33 different languages. The portal itself is accessed

from 36 countries and the UI is maintained in 31

languages.

• Europeana needs automatic translation so that its

content can be consumed all over Europe. Even more

important, though, is the quality of the search in

Europeana’s vast database of cultural heritage with

over 30M objects.

.

MLi language processing capabilities would enable the creation

and maintenance of a multilingual classification system by

processing the metadata in all the different languages

How can MLi add value to

existing services?

11

DSIs: Better Internet for Kids

• Machine translation will help Better Internet for

Kids to extend the reach for stimulating the

production of high quality online content for

children and for stepping up awareness and

empowerment.

• Since for the foreseeable future searching on the

Internet will continue to be text-based, adult and

illegal material can be found using language

technology.

With cross-language search and multilingual machine learning

algorithms, MLi language technology capabilities can provide

the basic tools to create a safe environment for children online

by classifying content and detecting inappropriate advertising.

How can MLi add value to

existing services?

12

DSIs: Online Dispute Resolution (ODR)

• ODR is key to build trust in the Single Digital

Market. Without an easy way to file and resolve

complaints, consumers are likely to be tricked by

fraudulent web sites or not served correctly to their

standards.

• This is especially true for cross-border offerings

where language and cultural issues make

transactions difficult and misunderstandings likely.

MLi automated translation capabilities can help to enable a better

communication between the parties involved when filing a complaint. In

addition, multilingual text analysis capabilities can support an

automatic classification of complaints and cross-language similarity

search can be used either to retrieve similar cases faster or to display

already resolved cases for early feedback.

13

Thank you! Ruben Riestra - INMARK

Project Coordinator

ruben.riestra@grupoinmark.com

www.mli-project.eu

@MLiproject

facebook.com/MLiproject