Building a Multilingual Thesaurus for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in Japan Hiroko AOKI Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Research Information Center (AFFRIC)/MAFFIN Japan 19 th APAN Meeting in Bangkok

Background (1)Project on the Development of a Digital Community(FY2001-FY2005) -Database mirroring ( FAO CDR database) -Library catalog ( research institute library) (2)Agropedia -Total information service system for Agricultural researcher -Contents: Database ( Satellite, Bibliography, Web Archives), Library Catalog 19 th APAN Meeting in Bangkok

Process : translated AGROVOC from English to Japanese :created the provisional version of AGROVOC Multilingual searching interface 19 th APAN Meeting in Bangkok

Process : completed the final version after reviewing and correcting the translated words : completed version and began to operate it officially th APAN Meeting in Bangkok

Current Status (1) Problems with AGROVOC From a view point of Japanese users: Terms related Asia monsoon climate regions (inc. Japan) Terms pertinent to agricultural civil engineering, agricultural engineering, agricultural chemistry, or food processing Terms concerning Japanese traditional fermented foods (ex. soybean paste : 味噌、 soybean sauce: 醤 油） 19 th APAN Meeting in Bangkok

example SUIDEN( 水田） (wet field for rice plantation)  PADDY FIELD  RICE FIELD(AGROVOC Term) rice is also grown in dry field 19 th APAN Meeting in Bangkok

(2)Japanese Agriculture Thesaurus Project (FY ) Objecvite to solve the problems with AGROVOC expanding AGROVOC ’ s capacity by adding Japanese agriculture, forestry and fisheries terms. 19 th APAN Meeting in Bangkok

Plan ( on going) 2004:selected terms for each specialized field from lexicons, technical dictionaries and glossaries produced by academic associations 2005:incorporate these terms into the information retrieval system following their integration and fine-tuning and the development of a thesaurus. 19 th APAN Meeting in Bangkok

Future Plan Develop a multilingual thesaurus in collaboration with FAO and AGRIS resource centers located in other Asian countries (including the exchange of versions of AGROVOC in local languages). Make active use of a multilingual thesaurus for cross-file searching among databases disclosed in AGROPEDIA and on the Web Expand the multilingual thesaurus capacity Build an ontological dictionary as an information retrieval tool 19 th APAN Meeting in Bangkok

Thank you 19 th APAN Meeting in Bangkok