ENABLER Thematic Network of National Projects: Technical, Strategic and Political Issues of LRs

In this paper we present general strategies concerning Language Resources (LRs) – Written, Spoken and, recently, Multimodal – as developed within the ENABLER Thematic Network. LRs are a central component of the so-called “linguistic infrastructure” (the other key element being Evaluation), necessary for the development of any Human Language Technology (HLT) application. They play a critical role, as horizontal technology, in different emerging areas of FP6, and have been recognized as a priority within a number of national projects around Europe and world-wide. The availability of LRs is also a “sensitive” issue, touching directly the sphere of linguistic and cultural identity, but also with economical, societal and political implications. This is going to be even more true in the new Europe with 25 languages on a par. Introduction After considering the strategic and infrastructural role of Language Resources (LRs) within any Human Language Technology (HLT) application (section 1), we focus on the main issues discussed within the ENABLER (European National Activities for Basic Language Resources) Thematic Network (section 2): the survey of LRs, interoperability and multilinguality, open access to LRs, validation methodologies for LRs, industrial and basic requirements. Finally, few recommendations are provided towards the design of general strategies and an overall coordination for the field of LRs (section 3). 1. The Strategic Role of LRs Language Resources (LRs) – Written, Spoken and, recently, Multimodal – are a central and strategic component of the so-called “linguistic infrastructure” (the other key element being Evaluation), necessary for the development of any Human Language Technology (HLT) application and product. The availability of adequate LRs for as many languages as possible is a pre-requisite for the development of a truly multilingual Information Society. They play a critical role, as horizontal technology, in different areas of the 6 Framework Programme, and have been recognized as a priority within a number of national projects around Europe. The availability of LRs is also a “sensitive” issue, touching directly the sphere of linguistic and cultural identity, but also with economical, societal and political implications. This is going to be even more true in the new Europe with 25 languages on a par. The ENABLER Thematic Network of HLT National Projects in European countries – an EC funded IST project, designed and started by Antonio Zampolli, with a clear strategic vision for the field of LRs – is the first broad European initiative which has the mission of explicitly considering together the technical, organizational, strategic and political issues of LRs. In ENABLER these various aspects are put together in a coherent framework, to set up mediumand long-term set of priorities (both technical and strategic) and to promote these at the national and international levels. Moreover, ENABLER has recognized the importance to promote actions aiming at integrating the different resource types, until now developed independently, and – as a consequence – at promoting the cooperation between the communities of Speech, Text and Multimodality. In the following we briefly highlight the main issues tackled by ENABLER on the different layers. 2. The Main Issues 2.1. The Survey of LRs The ENABLER Consortium conducted the Survey of LRs to get a global picture of the situation on LRs, in order to be able to compare the various conditions that hold across different languages and – on this basis – to suggest more