Talk: The Future European Multilingual Information Society.

This vision of a European Multilingual Information Society at the 2020 horizon, made possible by the availability of enabling Language Technologies (LTs), results from the thoughts of 3 Vision Groups on Translation and Localization, Information Services and Media and Interactive Systems, created within META-NET Those groups gathered more than 100 key researchers and industrials in a series of meetings along a 9-month period.

While languages are a cultural asset for Europe, it appears that the language barrier is an obstacle for the circulation of goods and ideas, in Europe and elsewhere. LTs are mandatory to overcome the issue of multilingualism. They are already successfully used in many different application areas, which represent a large market.

LTs may help suppressing the language barriers, bring natural interaction in intelligent environments for the elderly, permit accessibility to people with disabilities, facilitate the integration of migrants, provide personal information services, allow for global cooperation and communication, facilitate social media networking, increase security of people and data, and bring natural interaction in the future trends of applications, such as ubiquitous communication, 3D immersive environments and autonomous robots and agents.

Multilingualism is specifically important for the European Union, with its 23 official languages and its regional languages, while there exists no large program that address the issue, compared to what India or South Africa implemented for developing LTs to process their national languages.

The LT market is difficult to estimate as the technologies are embedded in various systems and many applications. Large companies such as Google or Microsoft devote a large effort in this area and already provide some intermediary solutions to the users.

Based on this analysis, we propose three visions, aiming at developing a Language Transparent Web and Media, at providing a more Natural and Inclusive Interaction and at allowing for more Efficient Information Management.

Those LT visions will feed a Strategic Research Agenda, in the horizon of 2020.

Short Biography

Joseph Mariani was the director of LIMSI, a French CNRS laboratory, from 1989 to 2000, and head of its "Human-Machine Communication” department, covering various modalities (spoken and written language processing, computer vision, computer graphics, gestual communication, Virtual and Augmented Reality, etc) and various approaches (Computer Science, Signal Processing, Linguistics, Cognitive Science, Human Factors, Social Sciences). He also chaired the Scientific Committee of the LIMSI VENISE transversal action on Virtual and Augmented Reality.

He then became Director of the "Information and Communication Technologies" department at the French Ministry for Research from 2001 to 2006. In this framework, he managed several national programs, and in particular he launched the Techno-Langue and Techno-Vision actions, addressing technology development and assessment in those domains.

He is now director of the Institute for Multilingual and Multimedia Information (IMMI), a joint International Laboratory involving LIMSI, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and RWTH Aachen (RWTH) (Germany), settled in 2008 in the framework of the Quaero national French program.

He is a member of the CNRS Ethics Committee (COMETS), a member of the Board of the System@tic Competitiveness Cluster, and a member of the Scientific Committees of the Telecommunication Engineering Schools (Institut Télécom) and of the National Institute for Research on Safety (INRS).

On the international scene, he coordinated the FRANCIL Network of the Francophone University Association (AUF), chaired the European Speech Communication Association, now International Speech Communication Association (ISCA) and is Honorary President of the European Language Resources Association (ELRA). He participated in the Board of the European Language & Speech Network of Excellence (ELSNET) and was the general convenor of the Cocosda committee. He presently seats in the Steering Committee of FLaReNet (the Fostering Language Resources Network) and in the Management Board and Council of META-NET (the Multilingual Europe Technological Alliance Network of Excellence).

He is in the Editorial Committees of the “Language Resources and Evaluation” and “Speech Technology” Journals, and of the “Text, speech and language” book series.He participated in the Editorial Committees of the “Speech Communication” Journal and of the "Survey of the State-of-the-Art in Human Language Technology". He recently edited the “Spoken Language Processing” monograph.

His research activities concern Human-Machine Communication and Human Language Technologies.