Creating a Universal Networking Language Module within an Advanced NLP System

A multifunctional NLP environment, ETAP-3, is presented. The environment has several NLP applications, including a machine translation system, a natural language interface to SQL type databases, synonymous paraphrasing of sentences, syntactic error correction module, and a computer-assisted language learning tool. Emphasis is laid on a new module of the processor responsible for the interface with the Universal Networking Language, a recent product by the UN University intended for the facilitation of multilanguage, multiethnic access to communication networks such as WWW. The UNL module of ETAP-3 naturally combines the two major approaches accepted in machine translation: the transfer-based approach and the interlingua approach.