Facilitating Communication Between Languages and Cultures: A Computerized Interface and Knowledge Base
Annual Call for Projects 2003
Summary
The United Nations University, the Information Systems Interfaces Research Group, the UNDL Foundation (Universal Networking Digital Language) and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) have combined their efforts on a project aimed at facilitating multilingual and multicultural communication on the Internet. Financial support is provided by the Geneva International Academic Network (GIAN).
The World Wide Web represents a formidable tool for communication and information access. With simple equipment, it is possible to access innumerable documents about a huge variety of topics from any place around the world. However, despite the abundance of information, the relatively limited material available in a wide variety of languages very often causes problems. Indeed, although more and more web pages are written in languages other than English, the huge majority of pages represent only about ten languages. Thus, depending on the languages mastered by a user, his or her accessible resources will be more or less restricted.
Several computer translation systems have been created to address this issue. For example, one can cite the translation services of Google (http://www.google.ch/language_tools) and Altavista (http://babelfish.altavista.com/). Nevertheless these kinds of systems have significant drawbacks. In particular the quality of results is often disappointing (in fact, computer translation systems perform well only in particular situations). These systems also only exist for a limited number of language combinations.
The UNL (Universal Networking Language) is an initiative of the Institute of Advanced Studies of the United Nations University to improve communication between languages and cultures on the Internet. The UNL is an artificial, formal and non-ambiguous language; it is independent of natural languages. The role of the UNL is to act as an intermediary. Unlike computer translation systems, the UNL system will not translate a text directly from a source language to a target language. With the UNL system, texts will be written directly in UNL, with the help of appropriate software tools. As UNL is formal and non-ambiguous, the UNL text can then be transformed automatically into a target natural language.
One of the most important elements of the UNL system is its knowledge base. This knowledge base contains not only a dictionary of "universal" words that represent concepts but also a set of relations between those concepts. All the words that appear in a UNL text must have been previously defined in the UNL knowledge base. The construction and maintenance of this knowledge base raises several interesting problems because of its particularities (large size, number of contributors and their geographical dispersion, linguistic and cultural issues).
The goal of this project is to create an infrastructure and tools to support the development and the evolution of the UNL knowledge base. Among the aspects that will be studied, one can mention in particular:
• Collaborative work: how to co-ordinate multiple participants who are located in different places and work asynchronously?
• Multicultural and multilingual issues: how to achieve a "global" knowledge base when participants have different languages and cultures?
• Infrastructure: which infrastructure is suited to asynchronous work and still ensures a coherent knowledge base?
This project includes both theoretical and applied research. As there is no known straightforward solution to these kinds of problems, theoretical studies will be carried out before the realization of prototypes and tools. The project corresponds to three distinct yet closely interrelated parts: 1) design and prototyping of an appropriate storage infrastructure for the knowledge base; 2) design and prototyping of various user interfaces to support different types of tasks and users; and 3) establishment of a methodology for the collaborative construction of the knowledge base.
The grant provided by the GIAN for this project totals SFr 240,000
Project Team
Dr. Gilles Falquet , Coordinator, Information Systems Department , University of Geneva (Unige) .
Dr. Rodolpho Pinto Da Luz , Principal Member, Universal Networking Digital Language Foundation (UNDL) .
Prof. Tarcisio Della Senta , Principal Member, Universal Networking Digital Language Foundation (UNDL) .
Ms Claire-Lise Mottaz Jiang , Principal Member, Information Systems Department , University of Geneva (Unige) .
Mr Pascal Renaud , Principal Member, United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) .
Ms Gabriela Tissiani , Principal Member, Information Systems Department , University of Geneva (Unige) .
Dr. Hiroshi Uchida , Principal Member, Institut of advanced studies (IAS) , United Nations University (Tokyo) (UNU) .
Ms Meiying Zhu , Principal Member, Institut of advanced studies (IAS) , United Nations University (Tokyo) (UNU) .
Mr Ron Valerio , Associated Member, United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) .
Related Links
> UNL Resources , UNL Resources.
> Résumé du projet , Résumé du projet.
Research Output
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Facilitating Communication Between Languages and Cultures: A Computerized Interface and Knowledge Base
(available in English only) > more |
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Documents presented at the World Summit on the Information Society
(available in English only) > more |