Much humanities research relies on or would benefit from analysis of electronic corpora (representative collections of texts). The main advantage of using corpora over hand-picked examples is the ability to collect data systematically, to assess the centrality of certain features to the research material, and to establish experimentally potential trends in the data. However, the major difficulty faced by corpus-based studies in humanities research is that creating and annotating a new corpus and designing an appropriate search engine for textual analysis require complex technical support.

IntelliText's novel contribution will be to tune advanced tools and methods from computer science to the needs of humanities researchers, integrating them into a single software application with a simple interface and good documentation. This will allow humanities researchers with no specialised background in computer science or corpus linguistics to take advantage of powerful methods of text collection and analysis. It will enable them to collect new project corpora from the web, have them enriched automatically with linguistic and other annotations, and
then easily uncover interesting patterns of usage, starting either from their own intuitions and hypotheses, or from expressions and patterns identified as potentially noteworthy by the system.

This project aims at developing language learning word cards with the most frequent words corresponding to the European Framework of Reference for Languages. It will be developed for nine languages important for trade and associated countries, both LWUTL (Swedish, Norwegian, Greek, Polish) and MWUTL (Arabic, English, Chinese, Russian and Italian), as complementary learning material.

The most frequent words will be developed in cooperation with lexical computational centres in each language's country. The project will refine existing frequency lists and adapt them to the Framework.  The project allocates words to both the Framework's 6 levels and to KELLY thematic classification in 15 subject categories (Food & Drink, Nature & Animals, etc). Visualized schematically in KELLY Syllabus, it allows teachers to deal with words systematically. Corresponding to all 6 Framework levels, the project ensures target group flexibility. Young and adults, beginners to advanced alike, can easily set clear aims, plan studies accordingly and control their progress.

The TTC project (Terminology Extraction, Translation Tools and Comparable Corpora) aims at leveraging machine translation tools (MT tools), computer-assisted translation tools (CAT tools) and multilingual content management tools by automatically generating bilingual terminologies from comparable corpora in several European languages (including under-resourced languages, i.e. languages with scarce linguistic resources), as well as in Chinese and Russian.

The ACCURAT project aims at researching methods and techniques to overcome one of the central problems of machine translation (MT) – the lack of linguistic resources for under-resourced areas of machine translation. The main goal is to find, analyse and evaluate novel methods that exploit comparable corpora in order to compensate for the shortage of linguistic resources, and ultimately to improve significantly MT quality for under-resourced languages and narrow domains.

The project aims to classify web pages automatically. There are many different kinds of documents on the web, from games to shopping pages to journalism to blogs. Different sorts of page have quite different uses and characteristics. A query for 'Venice' results in pages of various types, referring to recent news, information about history, guidebooks, hotel lists, opinions about hotels and restaurants, etc. For many applications (language teaching, machine translation, information retrieval and extraction) it is also important to have the possibility of selecting a subcorpus according to specific parameters, such as encyclopedic knowledge vs. instructions, texts written for professionals vs. for the general public, or opinions vs. factual text.

In this project we will work on different language families, so that the method can be shown to be portable to further languages. We will be testing the approach using webpages in English, Chinese, German and Russian.

Hand in hand with classifying pages, we need to identify the categories we shall classify them into. The web is new, and this is not an area that has been widely researched to date. We shall adopt an iterative approach by classifying samples of web pages to see which pages fit the existing classification scheme, and amending the scheme to allow for those that do not.

Translators have access to a wealth of information during the process of translating a text. This includes monolingual dictionaries to examine the senses in the source and target languages, and bilingual dictionaries to examine lexical equivalence. Less available is a translation (or parallel) corpus which provides examples of how translation equivalents are used in the target language. The recent research focus has been on providing translation equivalents for technical vocabulary in a restricted domain. The problem we aim to address is that of providing contextual examples of translation equivalents for words from the general lexicon.

For a sentence in the source language (English or Russian) the tool will give examples of similar contexts in the target language selected from the target language corpus and provide an interface for creating and maintaining a user dictionary of contextualised translation equivalents. The reason we concentrate on the general lexicon is because of the variety of meanings and possible translations that are exhibited by words from the general lexicon, but are not usually covered by translation equivalence lists given in bilingual dictionaries.

Partners: University of Lancaster; Centre for Translation Studies, University of Leeds

eCoLoTrain aims to improve the translation trainers’ and teachers’ ICT skills in general and eContent localisation skills in particular. In doing so, it will rely on the raw materials developed during the eCoLoRe project, specially created for scenarios involving the use of state-of-the-art software for eContent localisation.

From a practical point of view, eCoLoTrain will provide a set of original materials ranging from a dedicated curriculum for continuous vocational training in eContent localisation – including courses such as Computer Assisted Translation (CAT) and Project Management (PM) - via methodological and didactic guidelines, to concrete course materials. All the materials will be tested in various workshops involving translation teachers and trainers and will be freely downloadable from the project website.

Partners: Atril (DéjàVu); BDÜ (Bundesverband der Dolmetscher und Übersetzer); ITI (Institute of Translation and Interpreting); Pass Engineering (PASSOLO); Tallinn University; Centre for Translation Studies, University of Leeds; Univerza v Ljubljani; Universitatea Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Iaşi; Universität des Saarlandes

MeLLANGE aims to adapt vocational training for translators and other language professionals to meet the new needs that flow from globalisation and increased cross-cultural communication: an increased need for the management of intercultural language resources. MeLLANGE aims to:

• devise a methodology for the collaborative creation of corpus-based e-learning materials in translation and language resource management
• address the issue of a vocational training policy at the European level by coordinating MA programmes, within the framework of the Bologna declaration

• adapting existing corpora for use by material designers, trainers and end-users
• creating and analysing a corpus of learner translations

Partners: Université Denis Diderot Paris 7; Centre for Translation Studies, University of Leeds; Universität Wien; Universität Saarland (Saarbrücken); Universita di Bologna (Forli); Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona); Institute for Translation and Interpreting (ITI); Praetorius France; Oloumoc Training Centre
Silent Partner: Université de Genève

In conference interpreter training, with features of both language proficiency and communication at large, learners rely mainly on group practice and feedback from peers to advance their interpreting skills and performance. Currently, criteria for assessing the quality of learner interpreters' performance are articulated by interpreting instructors, usually in very high-level terms.

We plan to gather guidelines of good practice from expert interpreters in the UK and EU to formulate explicit and detailed assessment criteria for interpreting (simultaneous), which will be understandable and applicable by learner interpreters in critiquing the performance of their peers and themselves. In short, the project aims to promote learner autonomy in interpreter training by providing learners with detailed and applicable guidelines when practicing peer-assessment and self-monitoring.

Partners: Centre for Translation Studies, University of Leeds; Heriot-Watt University

The Ars Rococo project aims to improve a series of existing tools that could be used in a computer-based environment that assists English-speakers who know some French in acquiring reading skills in Romanian.

This environment will exploit comparable corpora of texts in the three languages, e.g. newspaper articles in a wide range of domains. These corpora will be processed using a range of available language technologies and tools in order to identify, for example: cognate words (sharing a similar structure) common to two or all three languages; salient words; salient combinations of words and word types; salient grammatical features or combinations of features. The underlying assumption is that the learner/reader will be enabled to use inference and analogy to develop an understanding of texts in Romanian, as well as of the Romanian linguistic system.

Partners: Centre for Translation Studies, University of Leeds; Romanian Academy Centre for Artificial Intelligence (RACAI)

eContent localisation is the translation and cultural adaptation for local markets of digital information. To be efficient, this relies heavily on specialised computer tools requiring intensive training. The desire of professional bodies and universities to provide adequate training is currently frustrated by a lack of resources.

These include sample texts and scenarios for their pedagogic exploitation in realistic, task-oriented settings. By providing such materials, eCoLoRe aims to remedy the "severe skills shortage" identified in the EC-sponsored SPICE-PREP II report on eContent localisation. Without these skills, the European digital economy will be stunted and access to wider world markets will be limited.

Partners: Centre for Translation Studies, University of Leeds; Atril Software SL, Spain; BDÜ e.V. (Bundesverband der Dolmetscher und Übersetzer - Federal Association of Translators and Interpreters), Germany; ITI (Institute of Translation and Interpreting), UK; SAP AG, Germany; Angewandte Sprachwissenschaft sowie Übersetzen und Dolmetschen (Department of Applied Linguistics and Translating/Interpreting), Universität des Saarlandes, Germany