 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 1 European Language Resources Association ELRA/ELDA: The Importance of Sharing Linguistic Resources Victoria Arranz ELRA/ELDA Rue Brillat-Savarin, Paris, France Tel Fax or

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 2 Presentation Outline ELRA’s Foundation and Mission ELRA’s Strategic Technical Activities: –Issues Concerning Archiving and Providing of Language Resources for the HLT Community –Administrative and Legal Issues Regarding Language Resources –Involvement in the Evaluation of Human Language Technologies –Promotion of the Language Technology Field Concluding Remarks

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 3 Centralized Non-profit organisation for the: Collection, distribution and validation of LRs and tools, Production or commissioning of production of LRs Evaluation of Human Language Technologies European Language Resource Association An Improved Infrastructure for Data Sharing and HLT Evaluation Operational agency  ELDA: Evaluation & Language Resources Distribution Agency

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 4 Europe and the Multilingual Issue More languages...Even within the same country

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 5 European Language Resource Association An Improved Infrastructure for Data Sharing  A Repository Center:  Technical & Logistic issues  Commercial issues (prices, fees, royalties)  Legal issues (Licensing, IPR)  Information Dissemination Infrastructure for the evaluation of Human Language Technologies providing resources, tools, methodologies, logistics Exit strategies / Capitalization on evaluation packages An Association of users of Language Resources

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 6 LRs & Human Language Technologies as seen by ELRA

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 7 Contrastive Analysis Public “role”- Streamlining public funds AFTER CE Established ELRA (LRs CURRENTLY DISTRIBUTED See ELRA Catalogue)  Return on Investment  Rational Capitalization  "Public" Assets ACQUILEX ARS GENELEX ONOMASTICA PLUS POLYGLOT REWARD SUNDIAL SUNSTAR BEFORE ELRA: No resources were made available Duplication of efforts and funding <== LRs NEVER DISTRIBUTED ACCOR COST-232 CRATER MULTEXT PAROLE SPEECHDAT Family TSNLP (Euro)WordNet

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 8 Language Resources Activities

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 9 Issues concerning Archiving and Providing of Language Resources for the HLT community: –Maintenance of ELRA’s Catalogue –Development of the Universal Catalogue and Identification of Useful Resources –Development of the Basic LAnguage Resource Kit (BLARK) –Development of the Extended LAnguage Resource Kit (ELARK) –Validation and Quality Assessment –Production or Commissioning of the Production of LRs Language Resources Activities

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 10 Language Resources Activities Administrative and Legal Issues regarding Language Resources: –Handling of Legal Issues related to the Availability of LRs –Distribution of LRs and Pricing Policy

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 11 Language Resources Activities Involvement in the Evaluation of Human Language Technologies: –Evaluation projects within ELDA

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 12 Language Resources Activities Promotion of the Language Technology Field: –Information Dissemination, Promotion and Awareness, Market Watch and Analysis

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 13 Issues Concerning Archiving and Providing of Language Resources for the HLT Community

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 14 The Universal Catalogue

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 15 Basic LAnguage Resource Kit (BLARK) Compilation of necessary LRs that should be available for all languages & regarding different Language Technologies and Modules Defined by Steven Krauwer and first launched through ELSNET with Dutch Initiative “Dutch Human Language Technologies Platform” In the framework of ENABLER thematic network (European National Activities for Basic Language Resources): ELDA elaborated report Sample: work done for Arabic resources within NEMLAR project:

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 16 ELRA’s BLARK

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 17 Validation and Quality Assessment Users need info on LRs: technical specifications, assurance of quality,... Validation is used by ELRA in reference to: checking the adherence to standards, QC of LRs, suitability for market Definition of validation methodology required: –Projects for the production of guidelines, standards and specifications: EAGLES, PAROLE, SPEECHDAT, INTERVAL,... –Establishment of a Validation Committee (VCom) SPEX (for speech resources): CST (for written resources): –Cooperation with key players with relevant expertise to act as validation units

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 18 ELRA’s Production of LRs Spoken Language Resources: –CHIL –C-ORAL-ROM –OrienTel –Neologos –Speecon –TC-STAR –ESTER –MEDIA Written LRs: – Technolangue projects: Lexitec Euradic –Technolangue/Evalda platform projects: Equer EASy

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 19 Administrative and Legal Issues Regarding Language Resources

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 20 Handling of Legal Issues Regarding LRs Support of lawyers for basic principles on LRs licensing One of ELRA’s priorities: simplify rel. between providers & users Drafting of generic contracts (with responsibilities & obligations) to encourage producers/providers to distribute Establish what usage is allowed for LRs: R&D or Research only? Protect providers and their LRs Are available on ELDA’s web site: ELRA: –not owner of LRs & sets fair price with owner, based on: Production costs Expected revenues ELRA’s distribution policy: try to offer discounted price for members ELRA’s effort to obtain low prices for R&D

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 21 Involvement in the Evaluation of Human Language Technologies

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 22 Levels of Evaluation (ELSE) -Basic Research Evaluation (validate research direction) -Technology Evaluation (assessment of solution for well defined problem) -Usage Evaluation (end- users in the field) -Impact Evaluation (socio- economic consequences) -Programme Evaluation (funding agencies)

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 23 Reusability of Resources Producer/ConsumerBNTCLIRTTSSUMZLM Broadcast NewsReuse Cross-Lingual Information Retrieval / Extraction Reuse Text To Speech Synthesis Reuse Text Summarisation Reuse Language Model Evaluation Reuse ELSE: Reusability of resources from one campaign to another

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 24 ELRA’s Activity on Evaluation Carrying out evaluation campaigns: further involvement at: –French (Technolangue/Evalda) and –European (CLEF, TC-STAR, CHIL, etc.) levels. Distributing evaluation packages Producing or commissioning the production of needed LRs for evaluation Conducted with the support of an Evaluation Committee: ECom

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 25 Evaluation Projects within ELDA CLEF 2004 campaign: TC-STAR: CHIL: Technolangue/Evalda: ARCADE II, CESART, CESTA, EASY, ESTER, EQUER, EVASY, MEDIA

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 26 Promotion of the Language Technology Field

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 27 Information Dissemination, Promotion and Awareness, Market Watch and Analysis Considerable effort on the promotion and dissemination of the LT field & its activities: –Partner/coordinator in several conferences, meetings, workshops: LREC Conference series (~900 participants) SCALLA 2004 International Conference on Arabic Language Resources and Tools 2004 Speech and Language System for Human Communication Conference 2004 LangTech Conferences

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 28 Information Dissemination, Promotion and Awareness, Market Watch and Analysis Elaboration and distribution of the ELRA Newsletter, quarterly publication dedicated to inform readers about HLT events, projects, new LRs, etc. Maintenance and/or setting up of a number of web sites: –ELRA: –ELDA: –LREC: –COCOSDA: –NEMLAR conference: –LangTech conferences: –Technolangue:

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 29 Information Dissemination, Promotion and Awareness, Market Watch and Analysis Public announcements posted to mailing lists Sponsorship activities Carrying out of market analysis and survey

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 30 Concluding Remarks Overview on major activities at ELRA and ELDA Aim of ELRA/ELDA  continue active role in support of HLT community: –Supporting researchers and developers in their needs of LRs –Evaluation guidelines –Validation guidelines –Development of standards –Working on the legal, distribution or pricing issues –We believe: we’re moving towards the future needs of LT in an organised and productive manner

 ELRA/ELDA EU Enlargement and Integration Workshop Arona, September 2005 Victoria Arranz 31 LREC-2006…