Igor Leturia

AnHitz, Development and Integration of Language, Speech and Visual Technologies for Basque

AnHitz is a project promoted by the Basque Government to develop language technologies for the Basque language. The participants in AnHitz are research groups with very different backgrounds: text processing, speech processing and multimedia. The project aims to further develop existing language, speech and visual technologies for Basque: up to now its fruit is a set of 7 different language resources, 9 NLP tools, and 5 applications.. But also, in the last year of this project we are integrating, for the first time, such resources and tools (both existing and generated in the project) into a content management application for Basque with a natural language communication interface. This application consists of a Question Answering and a Cross Lingual Information Retrieval system on the area of Science and Technology. The interaction between the system and the user will be in Basque (the results of the CLIR module that are not in Basque will be translated through Machine Translation) using Speech Synthesis, Automatic Speech Recognition and a Visual Interface. The various resources, technologies and tools that we are developing are already in a very advanced stage, and the implementation of the content management application to integrate them all is in work and is due to be completed by October 2008.

Development and evaluation of AnHitz, a prototype of a basque-speaking virtual 3D expert on science and technology

The aim of the AnHitz project, whose participants are research groups with very different backgrounds, is to carry out research on language, speech and visual technologies for Basque. Several resources, tools and applications have been developed in AnHitz, but we have also integrated many of these into a prototype of a 3D virtual expert on science and technology. It includes Question Answering and Cross Lingual Information Retrieval systems in those areas. The interaction with the system is carried out in Basque (the results of the CLIR module that are not in Basque are translated through Machine Translation) and is speech-based (using Speech Synthesis and Automatic Speech Recognition). The prototype has received ample media coverage and has been greatly welcomed by Basque society. The system has been evaluated by 50 users who have completed a total of 300 tests, showing good performance and acceptance.

Automatic Comparable Web Corpora Collection and Bilingual Terminology Extraction for Specialized Dictionary Making

In this article we describe two tools we have built, one for compiling comparable corpora out of the Internet and the other for bilingual terminology extraction out of comparable corpora, and an evaluation we have subjected them to: bilingual terminology has been extracted out of automatically collected domain-comparable web corpora, in Basque and English, and the resulting terminology lists have been validated automatically using a specialized dictionary, in order to evaluate the quality of the extracted terminology lists. Thus, this evaluation measures the usefulness of putting these two automatic tools to work together in a real-world task, that is, specialized dictionary making.

Risk for our Languages and A Challenge for Language Technology

We are witnesses to a digital revolution that is dramatically impacting communication and society. Recent developments in digital information and communication technology are sometimes compared to Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press. What can this analogy tell us about the future of the European information society and our languages in particular?

Language Technology Support for Basque

Language technology is used to develop software systems designed to handle human language and are therefore often called “human language technology”. Human language comes in spoken and written forms. While speech is the oldest and in terms of human evolution the most natural form of language communication, complex information and most human knowledge is stored and transmitted through the written word. Speech and text technologies process or produce these different forms of language, using dictionaries, rules of grammar, and semantics. This means that language technology (LT) links language to various forms of knowledge, independently of the media (speech or text) in which it is expressed.

Arriskua, Gure Hizkuntzentzat Eta Erronka Hizkuntza-Teknologiarentzat

Komunikazioan eta gizartean izugarrizko eragina izaten ari den iraultza digital baten aurrean gaude. Komunikazio-teknologia digitalizatu eta sarekoetan izan berri diren aurrerapenak Gutenbergek inprenta asmatu zuenekoarekin alderatzen dira, batzuetan. Zer esaten digu analogia horrek Europako informaziogizartearen eta geure hizkuntzen etorkizunari buruz?

Hizkuntza-Teknologia Euskararako

Hizkuntza-teknologiak giza hizkuntzarekin lan egiteko espezializatutako informazio-teknologiak dira. Horregatik, giza hizkuntzaren teknologia izenpean ere ezagutzen dira maiz teknologia hauek. Giza hizkuntza ahoz nahiz idatziz agertzen da. Hizkuntza-komunikazioko modurik zaharrena eta naturalena hizketa bada ere, informazio konplexua eta giza ezagutzaren zati handiena testu idatzien bidez gorde eta transmititzen da. Hizketaeta testu-teknologiek bi modu horietan prozesatzen edo sortzen dute hizkuntza. Baina, hizkuntzak baditu hizketan nahiz testuetan agertzen diren alderdiak ere, hala nola hiztegiak, gramatikaren zati handi bat eta esaldien esanahia. Hortaz, hizkuntza-teknologiako atal asko ezin dira bietako batean sartu, hizketa-teknologian ala testu-teknologian. Horien artean daude hizkuntza ezagutzarekin lotzen duten teknologiak.

Euskara Europako Informazio Gizartean

Euskara, Nafarroako Erresumako hizkuntza nagusia zelako latinez “Lingua Navarrorum” esaten zitzaiona, mendebaldeko Europan bizirik dagoen hizkuntza preindoeuropar bakarra da. Hizkuntza bakartutzat jotzen da, ez baitzaio loturarik aurkitu beste hizkuntzekin, antzinako akitanierarekin izan ezik. Euskararen jatorria nahiz beste hizkuntzekiko duen lotura gai gatazkatsuak eta interesgarriak dira oraindik ikerlarientzat.

Meta-Neti Buruz

Europako Batzordeak sortutako bikaintasunezko sarea da META NET. Sareak Europako 33 herrialdetako 54 kide ditu, gaur egun. META-NETek META, Europa Eleaniztunaren Teknologia Aliantza, babesten du, hizkuntza-teknologiako aditu eta erakundeen talde europar gero eta handiagoa. META-NETek oinarri teknologikoak eman nahi ditu informazio-gizarte zinez eleaniztuna sortzeko Europan, eta hari eusteko.

Basque in the European Information Society

Basque—or euskara, in Basque—, known as ‘Lingua Navarrorum’ in Latin because it was the popular language in the Kingdom of Navarre, is the only surviving pre-Indo-European language in western Europe. It is considered an isolated language, with no known connections with other languages other than ancient Aquitanian. Both the origin of the language and its relationship with other languages continue to be controversial and of interest for many researchers.