Challenges for Multilingual Europe

The META-NET initiative invited the Language Technology Community to meet at META-FORUM 2010 – “Challenges for Multilingual Europe” – the first edition of a strategic European conference aimed at a massive and concerted joint action with regard to assembling and mobilizing stakeholders from all Language Technology areas. The event took place on November 17/18, 2010 at the Hotel Le Plaza in Brussels, Belgium.

META-NET is a Network of Excellence, which is forging the Multilingual Europe Technology Alliance (META) to build a strong European community around Language Technologies. By working together to provide grand visions and a strategic research agenda for Language Technology in Europe, META-NET is reaching out to a fragmented community of diverse stakeholders to help foster the technological foundations of the European information society.

META-Forum 2010 took place in the heart of the European capital, Brussels. The event provided a focal point for bringing together Language Technology experts from research and industry, users and also providers of Language Technology solutions, along with language communities, educators and local and European policy makers. The first steps towards building a strategic research agenda for LT has been presented, along with a demonstration of META-SHARE, META-NET’s open resource exchange infrastructure. This year META-FORUM also played host to an information session detailing important information on the upcoming calls from the European Commission.

META-FORUM 2010 Keynote Speakers:

- Georg Artelsmair (EPO, Germany)

- Bill Dolan (Microsoft, USA)

- Yota Georgakopoulou (ECI, UK)

- Swaran Lata (IT Dept., Gov., India)

META-FORUM served as a gathering point for diverse communities of interest to meet and discuss developments, problems and opportunities presented by the challenges of a modern and multilingual Europe. However, META-FORUM was not just a great networking opportunity. The interactive sessions, panel discussions and the Multilingual Europe Technology Alliance provided the perfect platform to have a say and speak directly with decision makers, researchers, representatives from the industry and also policy makers.

For more information see:
http://www.meta-forum.eu/

Information and Communication Technologies under the 7th Framework Programme (FP7 ICT)

The FP7 ICT Framework Programme is updated every two years and defines the priorities for the calls for proposals to be launched. In recognition of the importance of languages in the digital age, the Work Programme 2011-2012 has a specific challenge "Technologies for Digital Content and Languages". It aims to make online content accessible for all, for citizens and businesses alike.

There are two objectives in Challenge 4 and two respective calls will be launched which are relevant to these topics:

Obj. 4.2: Language Technologies: Call 7

- Funding Mechanism: IP, STREP, CSA

- Budget: 50 Mio. Euro

- Publication Date: September 28th, 2010

- Closure Date: January 18th, 2011

Obj. 4.1: SME Initiative on Digital Content and Languages: Call SME-DCL

- Funding Mechanism: STREP, CSA

- Budget: 35 Mio. Euro

- Publication Date: February 1st, 2011

- Closure Date: April 28th, 2011

Both calls with full documentation will be published on CORDIS.

What Else ...
UA and CM create a Bilingual, Bicultural Roboceptionist "Hala" will be able to translate not just language but nuance when dealing with multicultural visitors Researchers at the University of Arizona and Carnegie Mellon University are working to create a robot receptionist. What makes the effort novel is that the "roboceptionist" is bilingual and bicultural – a computer with a face and a natural language interface. A three-year, $1 million grant from the Qatar National Research Foundation is funding basic advances in human-computer interaction. Majd Sakr, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, is the principal investigator on the grant. Reid Simmons, a professor at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute in Pittsburgh, and Sandiway Fong, a UA associate professor of linguistics and computer science, are the co-PIs. Carnegie Mellon University will provide the robotics innovations, while the UA will supply the language technology.
For more information, see: http://uanews.org/node/34701