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METANET4U - Enhancing the European Linguistic Infrastructure - New project for NaCTeM

2010-12-06

The European Commission has awarded a grant of 2.65m euros under its Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme to a consortium involving NaCTeM for a 24 month project, entitled METANET4U - Enhancing the European Linguistic Infrastructure. The objective of the project is to contribute to the establishment of a pan-European digital platform that makes available language resources and services, encompassing both datasets and software tools, for speech and language processing, and supports a new generation of exchange facilities for them.

This is articulated in terms of the following main goals:

• assessment: to collect, organize and disseminate information that permits to have an updated insight into the current status and the potential of language related activities, for each of the national and/or language communities represented in the project.
• collection: to assemble and prepare language resources for distribution. This includes collecting languages resources; documenting these language resources; upgrading them to agreed standards and guidelines; linking and cross-lingual aligning them where appropriate.
• distribution: to distribute the assembled language resources through exchange facilities that can be used by language researchers, developers and professionals. This includes collaboration with other partner projects, in particular with other successful projects coming out of the same call and with the META-NET network of excellence to ensure inter-operable approaches, practices and standards.
• dissemination: to mobilize national and regional actors, public bodies and funding agencies by raising awareness with respect to the activities and results of the project, in particular, and of the whole area of language resources and technology, in general.

By providing a major contribution for the creation, population and operation of a comprehensive platform for language resources distribution and exchange, this project aims at serving the widest possible range of potential providers and users in the area of language resources and technology, thus supporting large-scale multi- and cross-lingual web-based applications, products and services.

The project partners are:

• FACULDADE DE CIENCIAS DA UNIVERSIDADE DE LISBOA, Portugal (Coordinator)
• INSTITUTO SUPERIOR TECNICO, Portugal
• THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER, United Kingdom
• UNIVERSITATEA ALEXANDRU IOAN CUZA, Romania
• INSTITUTUL DE CERCETARI PENTRU INTELIGENTIA ARTIFICIALA, Romania
• UNIVERSITA TA MALTA, Malta
• UNIVERSITAT POLITECNICA DE CATALUNYA, Spain
• UNIVERSITAT POMPEU FABRA, Spain

NaCTeM Director Prof Sophia Ananiadou is Principal Investigator for the University of Manchester, with NaCTeM Deputy Director John McNaught as Co-Investigator.