Multilingual HLT in Europe and the development of ASR.ppt

30 Nov. 2001 PRASA2001 - Franschhoek Multilingual HLT in Europe and the development of ASR Louis C.W. Pols Institute of Phonetic Sciences University of Amsterdam The Netherlands Some history Liesbeth Botha spent half a year at our institute during second half of 1996 ever since the possible organization of a workshop or a major conference in South Africa was considered (cancelled) AST Workshop on ‘Human Language Technologies for E-Governance in a Multilingual Society’, Stellenbosch PRASA2001 – Franschhoek, 29-30 Nov., incl. Speech Processing and AST project I always wanted to visit South Africa! Overview Multilingual Europe (vs. Multilingual South Africa) EU Framework Programs; Human Language Technology (HLT) Other (European) programs and organizations ISCA Dutch speech database initiatives (vs. AST) Speech science and technology; ASR development Academia (knowledge) and industry (applications) Conclusions Multilingual Europe Europe (West, Central, East) EU-countries Candidate-EU-countries Schengen countries (internally no boundary control) Euro countries (300 M people) many nations and even more languages multilingual community and (open) market e-commerce, telebanking, infokiosk, etc. EU Framework Program FP5 Human Language Technologies RTD (HLT) / part of Information Society Technologies (IST), Key Action III (Multimedia Contents and Tools) part of fifth Framework Program ’98-’02 (FP5) IST 3600 M€ (26.5% of FP5); HLT 125 M€ HLT: Multilingual communication Natural Interactivity Cross-lingual information management Support Accompanying Measures 6th Framework program FP6 (’02-’06) the way forward proposal published Febr. 2001 one of 7 priority themes: Information Society Technologies also networks of excellence IST budget 3600 M€ Complaints from academia too much application user oriented little room for research (reaction Commission: it is time for HLT to show its usefulness!), but .... pendulum swings! speech data not freely avai