The document discusses the readiness of machine translation (MT) for e-government in Latvia, highlighting the importance of language diversity within the European Union. It outlines the goals of e-government, the benefits of using MT for effective communication, and the challenges faced in language support. Additionally, it emphasizes Latvia's unique linguistic situation and the development of MT technologies to enhance access to e-services for all language groups.

1. TAUS ROUNDTABLE 2014
22 May/ Moscow (Russia)

2. THURSDAY, 22 May /12:40 – 13:10
Is MT Ready for e-Government? The Latvian Story
Indra Samite, Tilde
TAUS ROUNDTABLE 2014
22 May/ Moscow (Russia)

3. Indra Sāmīte
indra.samite@tilde.com
Is MT ready for e-gov?
The Latvian story

4. • about Tilde
• eGovernment and the
challenge of language
diversity
• european language
landscape
• promise of MT
• MT for eGov in Latvia
• data challenge and
META-NET
• MT for Europe
outline

5. • Language technology developer
• Localization service provider
• Leadership in smaller languages
• Offices in Riga (Latvia), Tallinn
(Estonia) and Vilnius (Lithuania)
• 130 employees
• Strong R&D team
• 9 PhDs and candidates
• Trusted partner of the EU for
significant research projects

6. G2C
Government to Citizens
G2C
Government to Businesses
G2E
Government to Employees
G2G
Government to Governments
C2G
Citizens to Governments
eGovernment

7. transparency
customers on-line, NOT in line
efficiency
increase participation
reach marginalized groups
Goals of
eGovernment

8. • providing information
regulatory services, public hearing schedules,
issue briefs, notifications, etc.
• two-way communications with the citizen, a
business, or another government agency
• dialogue with agencies to post problems,
comments, or requests
• conducting transactions
lodging tax returns, applying for services and
grants, etc.
• Enabling citizen transition from passive
information access to active participation by:
– informing the citizen
– representing the citizen
– encouraging the citizen to vote
– consulting the citizen
– involving the citizen
eGov activities

9. 80 European languages
23 official languages
New countries and
languages joining soon
Croatia, IcelandMultilingual
Europe

10. 98%
Luxembourg
95%
Latvia
94%
Netherlands
93%
Malta
92%
Slovenia
Lithuania
91%
Sweden
EU countries
where people
can speak
at least
one language
in addition
to their mother
tongue

11. 65%
Hungary
62%
Italy
61%
United Kingdom
Portugal
60%
Ireland
EU countries
where majority of
people
cannot
speak any
foreign language

12. What role does
translation play
in your everyday life?
is translation
important
?
43
16
30
% of EU population
important
very important
no role

13. The importance of languages was
emphasized in the Council Resolution
on linguistic diversity of 14 February
2002 on acknowledging the part
played by languages in social,
economic and political integration,
particularly in an enlarged Europe.
Linguistic diversity is one of the
operating principles of the European
institutions. The Treaty on European
Union entitles every citizen to write to
any of the institutions in one of these
languages and to have an answer in
the same language (Article 21).
EU Policy

14. Preserving the European cultural and
linguistic diversity in the united
information and knowledge society
Securing at affordable costs the free flow
of information and thought across
language boundaries in the resulting
single information space
Providing each language community with
the most advanced technologies for
communication, information and
knowledge management so that
maintaining their mother tongue does not
turn into a disadvantage
Challenge
Credits: Hans Uszkoreit

15. EU MULTILINGUALITY
IN PRACTICE:
CASE STUDY
In October 2010, a Spanish lawyer turned to the Ombudsman,
complaining that many public consultations are only published
in English, for example, consultations concerning a new
partnership to help small and medium-sized enterprises and
concerning the freedom of movement of workers.

18. “The Commission should
ensure that all European
citizens are able to
understand its public
consultations,
which should [..]
be published in all the
official languages.
Its failure to do so is an
instance of
maladministration.”
4 October 2012
The European Ombudsman,
P. Nikiforos Diamandouros

19. [European] Commission [has] to ensure that every EU citizen's right to address the EU institutions in any of
the EU official languages is fully respected and implemented by ensuring that public consultations are
available in all EU official languages,[..] and that there is no language-based discrimination [..]
European Parliament resolution 2012/2676(RSP)

20. Fulfill the vision of
e-Government
AND the promise of
language diversity
The eGovernment
Challenge

21. machine translation
machine translation

22. Bridge the language
barrier
Speak your citizens’
languages
Promote diversity
Overcome barriers to
communication
Grow business
World peace 
MT for eGov

23. What MT
serves best
short shelf life
immediacy
large volume
multiple languages

24. Where it works
embedded in web
pages
multilingual online
services
social media
multi-lingual chat
mobile devices

25. customizable,
trainable
domain specific
on-demand
in the cloud
real –time
security
privacy
Specific
requirements

26. • EU Official
languages: 23
• EC procedural
languages: 3 (EN,
FR, DE)
• DGT:1750 linguists
and 600 support
• Where: in Brussels,
Luxembourg and in
local offices in
Member States
DGT Translation

27. The past: ECMT
• Rule-based machine translation
• Developed between 1975 and 1998
• 28 language pairs available (ten
languages)
• Since 2006 only linguistic maintenance
work on a
couple of systems
• Suspended in 12/2010
The future: MT@EC
• 05/2010 Commission Task Force
confirmed need
for new MT for the Commission
• 06/2010 Action plan approved by
management
• 09/2010 Work started for MT@EC
Machine
Translation
@
European
Commission

28. • Based on data-driven MT
technology
• Making best use of Commission
language resources
• Making best use of internal
linguistic expertise (1700
translators for 23 languages)
• Open and flexible
• Ensuring technological
independence
• Being built by DG Translation
• Started: summer 2010
• Deploy: summer 2013
MT@EC

29. Open to the market
Language technology watch (continuous)
Linguistic interventions - demonstration
projects in 2011
Comparison of baseline engines to market
offerings - 2012
… and to research
Using Moses
A major institutional user of MT
Involvement in projects (e.g. Multilingual
web)
Conferences for EU institutions staff (e.g.
EM+ workshop)
Provider of language resources…
MT@EC
Credits: Spyros Pilos, DGT

31. The DGT Multilingual
Translation Memory
of the
Acquis
Communautaire
http://langtech.jrc.it/DGT-TM.html

32. JRC-Acquis
The total body of European Union law applicable in the EU Member States
http://langtech.jrc.it/JRC-Acquis.html

33. Data for SMT training

35. META-NET Language
Whitepapers
30 European languages
Analyzing language
readiness for the digital
age
21 language under
long-term threat due to
inadequate technological
support
www.meta-
net.eu/whitepapers

36. Strategic Research Agenda

37.  Europe-wide social and business
networking in native language
 Mobile and internet services in native
language for e-Commerce, education,
travel, entertainment, etc.
 eGovernment reaching all linguistic
groups and enabling political
discussion across borders
 Unlimited TV/movie cross-language
subtitling/interpretation
 Ever present Personal Interpreter
 Translingual Spaces: dedicated
locations for ambient interpretation
Vision:
Applications
needed by EU
citizens and
businesses

38. • A ubiquitous online platform combining automatic
translation, language checking, post-editing, as well
as human creativity and quality assurance
• for generic and special-purpose
services
• free for small volume use and for high-
volume baseline quality
• involve providers of computer
supported HQ human translation
• business opportunities for a wide
range of service and technology
providers
• Assured privacy, confidentiality and security
provided by trusted service centers
• Quality upscale models: instant quality upgrades
• Domain and Task specialization
Vision: Services for
the EU Society and
Citizens

39. Ubiquitous translation
services for a full range of
quality levels, fast, affordable
Covers written and spoken
language from formal
language to chats and social
networking
Multi-media multi-language
content delivery
 On mobiles, tablets, PCs, etc.
Vision: Services for
the EU Society and
Citizens

40. Large cooperating projects
Sharing infrastructures: resources, evaluation
Smaller projects – providing building
blocks
National languages (resources, technologies)
Component technologies
Combined funding (EC, national, private)
Inclusion of industry and translation
professionals in the entire research and
innovation process
Solving legal hurdles on using data for
research
Connection to CEF
Infrastructural support (selected areas)
Resources, evaluation suites, organisation of
challenges
Organisation of
Research and
Innovation

41. Case Study:
LATVIA
The Latvian Story

42. population 2,1 M
1,6 million native
Latvian speakers
large Russian speaking
population (36%)
the
situation in
Latvia

43. less than 10m speakers
lack of parallel data
(corpora)
complex language
structure
highly inflected
language components
under developed
terminology
Under-resourced

44. provide e-services to all the
population / linguistic groups
develop technologies for
supporting Latvian in
information society
facilitate access to the
information of European
Union institutions
integrate in the infrastructure
of EU multilingual services
MT
@
eGov.LV

45. large corpus of parallel
data
large corpus of
monolingual data
MT core system
Infrastructure
language specific tools
such as morphology tools
What is
necessary to
develop
statistical MT

46. online translation
service
translation widget for
integration in eGov
service sites
standardized API for
universal integratability
Integration

47. Solution
for
MT
@
eGov.LV

48. the digitalization of culture
.

49. Solution
for
MT
@
eGov.LV

50. custom
machine
translation
as easy
and
affordable
as
a cup
of coffee

51. • upload your data
TMX, XLIFF, DOC, PDF, XLZ, TXT
• combine it with the data on the LetsMT
public repository
• generate your custom MT
with a few mouse clicks
• run your MT system
on the LetsMT cloud
• use it in your CAT tool
with LetsMT plug-in
• integrate through LetsMT API
in your online or desktop app

52. 1,4 billion
parallel sentences
102
languages
129
MT systems trained
*status on 12-10-2012

53. custom
terminology
incremental
data
custom
MT

54. cloud-based
terminology services
for
term extraction
and
multilingual term
glossary creation
for
human and
machine translation

55. .

56. Machine translation
bringing governments and citizens closer

57. tilde.com
Author:-Copyright:Stocklib©RobertWilson
The research within the projects META-NET, LetsMT! and TaaS has received funding from the European Commission ICT
Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP) and FP7 Programme