Cooperation with Central and Eastern Europe
in Language Engineering

Poul Andersen

1. Introduction

The right of all citizens to communicate and receive information in their own language is a basic principle of the European Union. In order to preserve a multi-lingual Europe, with at present 11 official languages in the European Union, the European Commission takes a strong interest in Language Engineering along at least two dimensions:

• As a multilingual institution, it is itself an important user of LE products: The European Commission uses and supports the development of Machine Translation and Machine Aided Translation, Terminological Data Banks and other tools that can help it in the huge task of translating more than 1 million pages each year. The Commission's own use of LE products is however outside the scope of this presentation.
  
  
• The European Commission encourages and supports financially Research & Development in the area of Language Engineering, with respect for the principle of subsidiarity, which implies that support mainly is given to multilingual activities, involving cooperation between partners from several member states.

2. Fourth Framework Programme

At present, scientific and technological cooperation in the field of LE is supported through the Fourth Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (1994-1998) (4^th FWP). This programme comprises a wide range of areas. The largest part of the funding is allocated to Activity 1, which covers RTD (Research and Technological Development) and Demonstration Programmes within the European Union. One of the Specific Programmes within Activity 1 of 4^th FWP is the Telematics Applications Programme, which includes Language Engineering.

The aim of Language Engineering is to facilitate the use of telematics applications and to increase the possibilities for communication in and between European languages by integrating new spoken and written language-processing methods. Work focuses on pilot projects that integrate language technologies into information and communication systems and services. A key objective is to improve their ease of use and functionality and broaden their scope across different languages.

Language Engineering as defined in 4^th FWP covers the following Action Lines:

1. Pilot Applications

   Document Creation and Management
   Information and Communication Services
   Translation and Foreign Language Acquisition

2. Re-usable Language Resources
   
   
3. Language Engineering Research
   
   
4. Support Issues Specific to Language Engineering
   (i.a. standards, assessment and evaluation, awareness activities, user surveys)

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