1. HLT Research and Development for Baltic Languages in Tilde
Andrejs Vasiļjevs, Raivis Skadiņš
Tilde
Riga, October 27, 2004

2. HLT needs of Baltic users
Baltic users expect the same possibilities for their language as are available for other languages
Raising number of users without English proficiency
Bilingual/multilingual environment, language competition
EU accession and globalization creates huge demand for translation

3. Prerequisites for HLT application development
Cross-disciplinary higher education
HLT industry
Scientific
Research
HLT
Industry

4. Challenges for Baltic Languages
Rich structure, inflectivity and complexity of languages
Relatively small number of speakers, small market
Few researchers active in HLT, insufficient scientific base
Lack of specialists resulting from lack of targeted education programs

5. Tilde - Basic Facts
Tilde – leading Baltic developer of software and services that helps Baltic users to get most from the use of new technologies taking into account their language, business environment, culture and local information needs
Established in 1991
Offices in Riga, Vilnius and Tallinn
75 employees

6. Tilde - Areas of Activity
Language and Reference Tools for Baltic Languages
proofing tools, dictionaries, translation tools, fonts, search tools, speech tools, Encyclopedias
Localization Services for ICT products
translation and adaptation of interface and documentation for software and hardware products
Information management solutions
Streaming media

7. Localization Services – Where Global Meets Local
Requirement of users – to have interface and documentation in Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian
Full cycle of localization services
Intelligent translation using translation memory, e-dictionaries and other tools
Professional team across the Baltics
Global clients in local markets – Microsoft, IBM, Ericsson, Nokia, Xerox, Hewlett Packard and others
MS Windows, MS Office, Oracle, mobile phones – examples of localized products

8. Proofing Tools
More than 10 years of development
Tools for Latvian and Lithuanian languages
Spellchecker
Intelligent Autocorrect
Grammar checker
Hyphenator
Thesaurus
Collaboration with Microsoft, developments for Lotus Notes

9. Demo – Grammar Checker and Spellchecker

10. Demo - Thesaurus

11. Terminology Portal
Partnership from NGO and private sector to provide common online database of terminology from all fields
Initiated by LITTA (Latvian Information Technology and Telecommunication Association)
Partners: LITTA, LMT, Tilde, Terminology Commission
Currently covers > terms from 35 fields

13. Demo – Text-to-Speech in MS Excel

14. Our Products
Tildes Birojs complete solution for working with computer in Latvian
Tildės Biuras complete solution for working with computer in Lithuanian
> licensed users

15. Tildes Birojs and Tildes Biuras
HLT Tools - Proofing tools, Dictionaries, Learning tools, Limited speech synthesis, Search facilities
Language support for all popular operating systems Windows 95/98/NT/2000/Me/XP, Windows CE, Linux, MacOS
Text input tools - keyboard drivers and keyboard adjustment tools, fonts, converters
OCR
Document Templates
Information resources – smart tag references, eBooks and others

16. Web service – Letonika.LV
Encyclopedias (General, History, Poetry, Financial, Regional)
Translation Dictionaries
Terminology Dictionaries
Catalog of Latvian Web
Advanced search system (under development)

17. Search and information retrieval
Established infrastructure for web crawling and indexing
Search result ranking and filtering methods
Advanced usage of Latvian/Lithuanian morphology
Integrated with Latvian Web Catalog
Wide coverage, constantly updated
Work on style guessing

18. Demo – Search in Latvian Web

20. Further Development Tilde’s goal:
To enable Baltic users to explore results of native language HLT in their everyday work
Development directions:
Search and information retrieval technologies
Machine Translation
Speech technologies

21. Success factors Demand driven approach focusing on user needs
Development of base technologies and integration in end-user products (like integration of morphology in dictionary)
Iterative approach – efficient delivery of first results and constant improvements

22. Challenges
Further development in advanced areas (speech, machine translation, IR etc.) is very complicated and resource consuming
Technology gap separating from large languages should be narrowed
Baltic and EU cooperation is critical
Researchers and industry developers should target EU programs with joint projects

23. THANK YOU!