META-FORUM, an international conference on language technologies for the multilingual European information society held late last month sent a mix of alarming and optimistic messages on the future of European languages.
The conference was held in a context where cultural and linguistic diversity is a hallmark of European integration but non-English content on internet is increasing very fast. Small European languages seem to suffer more from the so-called “technology gap”.
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. For 23 languages, we already have 506 pairs of source and target languages, for 60 languages 3,540 pairs are needed.
The global internet permits the free exchange of information, and human language is the only medium for storing and sharing mankind’s knowledge, serving as the fabric of the web. Yet, this web consists of many languages, and non-English content is growing very fast. 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.
META-FORUM 2011 reported on the status of several European languages in the digital age and unveiled a new service for sharing and maintaining such resources, called META-SHARE, which will greatly facilitate research and development.
Even today, language technology supports us in everyday tasks, such as writing e-mails or buying tickets. We benefit from language technology when searching for and translating web pages; using a word processor’s spell and grammar checking features; operating our car’s entertainment system or our mobile phone with spoken commands; getting recommendations in an online book-store; or following the instructions spoken by a mobile navigation app. In the near future, we will be able to talk to computer programs as well as machines and appliances. Removing the communication barrier between people and technology will change our world.
The main message of META-FORUM 2011 was that 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. 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.
The conference, an official event of the Hungarian EU Presidency, brought together representatives of top-notch European research centres, small and large technology corporations, translation services and other users of language technology, language communities, and policy makers responsible for supporting research and innovation.
The meeting was organised by META-NET, a network of excellence consisting of 47 research centres in 31 countries and funded by the European Commission. META-NET is forging the “Multilingual Europe Technology Alliance” uniting technology researchers, providers and users for a large European research and innovation effort. Representatives of more than 280 organisations from 40 countries have already joined the alliance.
The Maltese contact is Mike Rosner, from the Faculty of ICT at the University of Malta. He can be reached at mike.rosner@um.edu.mt.