scholarly journals How the ELE projects aims to bring the voices of the Wikimedia communities on Digital Language Equality into future European Commission Programs

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Heuschkel Heuschkel
Keyword(s):  
European Commission ◽  
Minority Languages ◽  
European Level ◽  
European Language ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
Technological Support ◽  
Language Technology ◽  
Major Stakeholder ◽  
Language Environment ◽  
Digital Language

The European Commission is funding the project “European Language Equality” and next to 52 other partners, Wikimedia Deutschland is part of this partner consortium. The project is aiming to address the challenge that not all 24 official EU languages or the regional and minority languages in Europe have the same digital support. In order to achieve a state in which all languages have the technological support necessary for them to continue to exist and prosper in the digital age, the project partners are preparing a convincing agenda and roadmap on how to get there by 2030.  The Wikimedia movement, consisting of volunteers and organizations whose daily business is dealing with languages and language technology, is a major stakeholder for the language technology community. In order to know what it will take to get to a state of full digital equality we want the project consortium to know the pains, challenges, wishes and needs of the volunteers and communities keeping the multi-language environment of Europe alive everyday.  This lightning talk will give a short introduction to this European project and present a survey that is used to collect needs, hopes and challenges from the language technology community. We are hoping that with this the communities perspective on digital language equality will influence future programs, projects, funding and structures on an European level. 

scholarly journals FinUgRevita: Developing Language Technology Tools for Udmurt and Mansi

2015 ◽  
pp. 108
Author(s):  
Veronika Vincze ◽  
Ágoston Nagy ◽  
Csilla Horváth ◽  
Norbert Szilágyi ◽  
István Kozmács ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Language Production ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Minority Languages ◽  
Digital Space ◽  
Digital World ◽  
Language Technology ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Digital Language

Nowadays, digital language use such as reading and writing e-mails, chats, messages, weblogs and comments on websites and social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter has increased the amount of written language production for most of the users. Thus, it is primarily important for speakers of minority languages to have the possibility of using their own languages in the digital world too. The FinUgRevita project aims at providing computational language tools for endangered indigenous Finno-Ugric languages in Russia, assisting the speakers of these languages in using the indigenous languages in the digital space. Currently, we are working on two Finno-Ugric minority languages, namely, Udmurt and Mansi. In the project, we have been developing electronic dictionaries for both languages, besides, we have been creating corpora with a substantial number of texts collected, among other sources like literature, newspaper articles and social media. We have been also implementing morphological analyzers for both languages, exploiting the lexical entries of our dictionaries. We believe that the results achieved by the FinUgRevita project will contribute to the revitalization of Udmurt and Mansi and the tools to be developed will help these languages establish their existence in the digital space as well.

INTRODUCTION: HEALTH TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT AND THE EUROPEAN UNION

2000 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Banta ◽  
Wija Oortwijn
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
European Union ◽  
Health Technology Assessment ◽  
European Commission ◽  
Technology Assessment ◽  
Health Technology ◽  
The European Union ◽  
European Level

Health technology assessment (HTA) has become increasingly important in the European Union as an aid to decision making. As agencies and programs have been established, there is increasing attention to coordination of HTA at the European level, especially considering the growing role of the European Union in public health in Europe. This series of papers describes and analyzes the situation with regard to HTA in the 15 members of the European Union, plus Switzerland. The final paper draws some conclusions, especially concerning the future involvement of the European Commission in HTA.

Digitizing Humanities in South Africa: Computational linguistic resources, training, and community building

2020 ◽  
Vol 02 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rooweither Mabuya ◽  
Dimakatso Mathe ◽  
Mmasibidi Setaka ◽  
Menno van Zaanen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Computational Linguistic ◽  
South African ◽  
Digital Humanities ◽  
Community Building ◽  
Language Resources ◽  
Language Technology ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences ◽  
Digital Language

South Africa has eleven official languages. However, not all have received similar amounts of attention. In particular, for many of the languages, only a limited number of digital language resources (data sets and computational tools) exist. This scarcity hinders (computational) research in the fields of humanities and social sciences for these languages. Additionally, using existing computational linguistics tools in a practical setting requires expert knowledge on the usage of these tools. In South Africa, only a small number of people currently have this expertise, further limiting the type of research that relies on computational linguistic tools. The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR) aims to enable and enhance research in the area of language technology by focusing on the development, management, and distribution of digital language resources for all South African languages. Additionally, it aims to build research capacity, specifically in the field of digital humanities. This requires several challenges to be resolved that we cluster under resources, training, and community building. SADiLaR hosts a repository of existing digital language resources and supports the development of new resources. Additionally, it provides training on the use of these resources, specifically for (but not limited to) researchers in the fields of humanities and social sciences. Through this training, SADiLaR tries to build a community of practice to boost information sharing in the area of digital humanities.

The EU's Use of the Internet

2011 ◽  
pp. 774-783
Author(s):  
J. Shahin
Keyword(s):  
European Commission ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Information Provision ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Internet ◽  
European Level ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Use Of The Internet ◽  
The Eu ◽  
The Way

The European Union (EU) has been one of the leading lights concerning Internet use in dealing with other public administrations and citizens. This article will argue that e-government has meant that the European Commission has been able to promote a virtual arena for pan-European activity, which has promoted action at the national and local levels in the EU. In the first instance, this article will deal with how the European Commission uses the Internet to attempt to improve its own relationship with both national public administrations and citizens in terms of the European policy-making process. Although the Internet is perceived as aiding public administrations in information and service provision, which helps to deliver better governance from an institutional governance perspective, a focus on this would only tell one half of the story. Increasing democratic participation and regaining trust in the political system at large is also an important issue for public bodies such as the European Commission to address, and this is not merely a technical process. These technical (efficiency, etc.) and democratic stages are two key parts in the process of developing an information and communication technology (ICT)-based governance agenda in the EU. In order to outline the process, this article deals with four different aspects of the European Commission’s e-policies. It makes reference to the following: 1. The Commission’s information provision, through the EU’s Europa (II) Web server; 2. The way in which the Commission has tried to interact with citizens, using interactive policy making (IPM); 3. The e Commission initiative; and 4. The way in which the Commission links member-state public administrations together, through the IDA(BC) programme. This article reveals the increasing coherence of the European Commission’s approach to using the Internet in institutional affairs. Although the Commission’s approach to using the Internet for governance was initially unstable and ad hoc, by the turn of the century, all efforts had converged around the political issues of institutional reform and better governance. This has been further enhanced by the application of the open method of coordination as one of the tools of EU governance, which has enabled the Commission to take a more informal role in implementing e-government strategies at the pan-European level. This article does not attempt to define e-government at the European level nor does it go into policy areas concerning e-government (such as research, socioeconomic inclusion, improving competitiveness, or specific e-government policy developed by the European Commission), but will contribute to a greater understanding of how the EU itself has used the Internet to promote an e-government agenda that is affecting all public administrations.

Digital Language Divide in the European High North: The Level of Online Presence of Minority Languages from Northern Finland, Norway and Sweden

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 245-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcin Dymet
Keyword(s):  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Online Community ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Minority Languages ◽  
Access To Information ◽  
Online Presence ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
Level Of Knowledge ◽  
Unequal Access ◽  
Digital Language

One of the inequalities generated by the introduction of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is the digital language divide, that is, differences in the online presence of languages and unequal access to information due to the lack of understanding of the available content. The digital language divide is particularly visible in the case of small languages with a low number of speakers. There is a large group of languages with non-existent or irrelevant online presence. This is often the case of the endangered minority languages. The number of language speakers or the level of knowledge of a given language is not sufficient to generate a vital online community. This article presents the current language situation in the European High North with a focus on minority languages: Sámi and Meänkieli languages in Sweden, Sámi and Kven languages in Norway, and Sámi languages in Finland. It also introduces the phenomenon of digital language divide. The article explores the current situation of the minority languages in the European High North in light of their online presence. It responds to the following questions: Is there online presence of the studied minority languages? Is there a need amongst the minorities’ members for more extensive presence? To conclude, the article discusses the possible effects of a language’s underrepresentation.

EU Mobility Partnerships: A Model of Policy Coordination?

2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 327-345 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roderick Parkes
Keyword(s):  
Social Development ◽  
European Commission ◽  
Policy Coordination ◽  
Cape Verde ◽  
The Political ◽  
Positive Contribution ◽  
European Level ◽  
Eu Policy ◽  
Policy Context

AbstractAs migration cooperation has grown in stature at the European level, a premium has been set on its conceptual coordination with related areas of EU policy. The Mobility Partnerships which the bloc recently signed with Moldova and Cape Verde appear as a model of this kind of coordination. Indeed their advocates believe they can regulate migration in such a way that the Union’s economic, social, development and neighbourhood policies all benefit. A simple tri-partite method is here employed to gauge the complementarity of one of the Partnerships, that with Moldova, with its broader policy context. The present analysis suggests that the political exigencies involved in realising the agreement led to conceptual overstretch. Although the Partnership seldom clashes with its broader policy context, the considerable demands placed on its coordinators in the European Commission mean that the Partnership’s positive contribution to related policy areas remains bitty and lacking in coherence.

scholarly journals European Language Grid: A Joint Platform for the European Language Technology Community

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georg Rehm ◽  
Stelios Piperidis ◽  
Kalina Bontcheva ◽  
Jan Hajic ◽  
Victoria Arranz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
European Language ◽  
Language Technology

scholarly journals Will Minority Languages Survive in the Information Society? An Israeli Point of View

2021 ◽  
pp. 211-218
Author(s):  
Chaim Seymour
Keyword(s):  
Information Society ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
National Language ◽  
Minority Languages ◽  
Scientific Language ◽  
Unique Case ◽  
Language Technology ◽  
Hebrew Language ◽  
Global Information Society

The article raises the role of the minority national language within a global information society. The Hebrew language is a unique case of the revival of a classic language. In the early twentieth century a project was carried out to establish a technical university in what was then called Palestine The founders preferred to teach in Gem an, the dominant international scientific language technology. They daimed that Hebrew was unsuitable for scientific discourse. The opposition succeeded in defeating the founders and thus guaranteed the use of Hebrew in the fields of science and technology. The changing relationships and tension between the local language and the international lingua franca is still subject to debate today and the events of the so-called language war have much to teach us.

A European Structural Crisis Cartel as Solution to a Sectoral Depression?

2017 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Marx
Keyword(s):  
European Commission ◽  
Textile Industry ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
European Economic Community ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Chemical Fibre ◽  
Fibre Industry ◽  
European Level ◽  
Economic Community ◽  
The 1960S

Abstract Due to the decline of the Western European textile industry in the 1960s and international economic turbulences in the 1970s, the chemical fibre industry in Western Europe ran into trouble. The ten largest manufacturers of polyester fibres therefore applied for a structural crisis cartel in 1972. Even though the European Commission rejected the request, the question of a cartel agreement remained a topic of discussion at the European level for more than ten years. In June 1978, eleven European manufacturers of chemical fibres signed a cartel agreement in Brussels, but it was not compatible with the Treaty of the European Economic Community. It was not until 1980 that the companies submitted a new contract to the European Commission which was in accordance with antitrust law and renewed in 1982. The article analyses the course of negotiations as well as the driving forces and different aims of political and industrial players on the national and the European level.

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