A Major Effort to Deploy Language Technologies Necessary to Ensure Europe's Global Market Position

Dec. 7, 2012 - PRLog -- Top executives of European Language Technology companies, who joined forces in LT-Innovate, are calling for a major effort to deploy language technologies as a key building block of the Digital Single Market and enabler of a language-neutral eContent economy.  

On 6 December, LT-Innovate released a Vision Statement entitled “Language Technologies: Establishing Europe's Global Market Position & Securing the Digital Single Market” through which it hopes to stimulate a broad discussion.

The Discussion Document underlines that “mastering human language is the next big opportunity in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and Language Technology (LT) is a key technology of the future. Europe (a multilingual continent with more than 63 languages) should step up its investment in LT as strategic key enabling technologies that will determine the continent's economic competitiveness as well as its cultural integrity.

In one of its main proposals, the Discussion Document calls for a “European Language Cloud” (ELC) which would considerably bring down the costs of cross-border products and services and allow all Europeans to seamlessly interact with the 1 billion+ market of speakers of European languages. The ELC would constitute a major opportunity and boost for the European economy and society, creating many new jobs. Such a platform should also support the languages of Europe’s major trading partners, making European companies and citizens fittest for the global markets.

Jochen Hummel, LT-Innovate Chairman, comments: “There is no lack of innovation in Europe. The main stumbling block is that Europe’s SMEs do not grow beyond their national or regional linguistic islands to address European and global markets. European SMEs must get access to a market of continent-wide dimensions, through European-scale projects backed by European-scale funding. The European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Programme offers a major opportunity to boost innovation and regain competitiveness; but European Programmes need to become results-driven and should put innovators and job creators, in other words SMEs, into the driving seat!”.  

The Discussion Document is available on the LT-Innovate website (www.lt-innovate.eu/system/files/documents/2074-LT Industry Vision v1.0_061212.pdf). Join the discussion here (http://ltinnovate.blogspot.be/2012/12/language-technologi...)!

Background information

Language Technologies: Intelligent, Interactive & Multilingual

LT is the branch of information technology dealing with natural language information. It can roughly be split into three segments: intelligent content, speech and translation technologies.

LT Innovate – The Forum of Europe’s Language Technology Industry

LT-Innovate represents companies, mostly SMEs, involved in developing products using intelligent content, speech and translation technologies. LT-Innovate was founded in January 2012. As of December, it gathers 120 LT suppliers in 22 countries, as well as several dozens of other LT stakeholders. The European Language Technology industry generated an aggregate turnover of 19.3 bn € in 2011. LT is a very dynamic industry, with a yearly growth rate in excess of 10%.          

Press Contacts

Philippe Wacker
Secretary General
phw@lt-innovate.eu
+32 2 219 0305

Myrna Ródriguez-Hausséguy
Communications Coordinator
mrh@lt-innovate.eu

website: http://www.lt-innovate.eu

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ltinnovate - http://www.twitter.com/langtechnews

Blog: http://ltinnovate.blogspot.com/