Establishment of Language Technologies Research Centre

The NRC Institute for Information Technology (NRC-IIT) is a partner in establishing a new Language Technologies Research Centre (LTRC) in Gatineau, Quebec. The new initiative is part of the Action Plan for Official Languages released in March 2003 by the Federal Government.

The Language industry accounts for more than $1 billion annual sales in Canada and the world market is expected to grow from $8 billion US in 2001 to $15 billion US by 2006. The industry involves key services and technologies such as translation, software/Web site localization, dubbing, language training, speech processing, and multilingual processing for information and communication.

The Centre will help develop new technologies in support of Canadian language industries. Projects will be developed in partnership with industry, government and universities. A series of public consultations — i.e., a Technology Roadmap exercise and six round tables (Moncton, Montreal, Gatineau, Toronto, Edmonton, and Vancouver) — have already been held to help determine the LTRC's specific research program. This is a proven approach used by NRC in developing technology clusters across Canada.

NRC-IIT is well placed to contribute to the LTRC because of its existing strengths in techno-linguistic tools development. Past research has led to tools intended to:

• help Francophones obtain French summaries of English documents;
• search in French across English web pages; and
• help Anglophones learn the gender of French nouns.

And tools, such as spell checkers, grammar checkers, search engines and translation tools are being developed in Inuktitut and Maliseet languages.

For the creation of the LTRC, NRC-IIT is working with the Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO), the Translation Bureau Canada and the newly formed Language Industry Association (AILIA), a non-profit organization working to become "the voice of the language industry." AILIA will hold its inaugural meeting on 29 September 2003 at the Ottawa Congress Centre.

For more information on the LTRC, or about AILIA:

• NRC Institute for Information Technology
  
• Jacques Domey, Director, NRC Language Technologies Research Centre, NRC-IIT
• Language Industry Association (AILIA)

		How would you rate this article?
		12345 1 = not informative5 = very informative Comments: