The SILT and FlaReNet International Collaboration for Interoperability

Two major projects in the U.S. and Europe have joined in a collaboration to work toward achieving interoperability among language resources. In the U.S., a project entitled ”Sustainable Interoperability for Language Technology” (SILT) has been funded by the National Science Foundation under the INTEROP program, and in Europe, FLaReNet Fostering Language Resources Network has been funded by the European Commission under the eContentPlus framework. This international collaborative effort involves members of the language processing community and others working in related areas to build consensus regarding the sharing of data and technologies for language resources and applications, to work towards interoperability of existing data, and, where possible, to promote standards for annotation and resource building. In addition to broad-based US and European participation, we are seeking the participation of colleagues in Asia. This presentation describing the projects and their goals will, we hope, serve to involve members of the community who may not have been aware of the effort before, in particular colleagues in Asia.