No C 209/24 Official Journal of the European Communities 22. 8. 90 
Amended proposal for a Council Decision adopting a specific programme concerning the prepa­
ration of the development of an operational Eurotra system 
COM(90) 296 final — SYN 228 
(Submitted by the Commission pursuant to Article 149 (3) of the EEC Treaty on 20 July 1990) 
(90/C 209/06) 
THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES, 
Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European 
Economic Community, and in particular Article 130q (2) 
thereof, 
Having regard to the proposal from the Commission, 
In cooperation with the European Parliament, 
Having regard to the opinion of the Economic and 
Social Committee, 
Whereas Article 130k of the Treaty provides that the 
framework programme shall be implemented through 
specific programmes developed within each activity; 
Whereas by Decision 87/516/Euratom, EEC (*) the 
Council adopted a framework programme of 
Community research and technological development 
(1987 to 1991) providing inter alia for activities on 
linguistic problems (action line 8.4), including the prepa­
ration of the development of an operational machine 
translation system; 
Whereas by Decision 82/752/EEC (2), the Council 
adopted a Community research and development 
programme for a machine translation system of advanced 
design (Eurotra); 
Whereas Decision 86/591/EEC (J) amended Decision 
82/752/EEC on account of the accession of Spain and 
Portugal; 
Whereas by Decision 88/445/EEC (4), the Council 
approved the transition of the Eurotra programme to its 
third phase; 
Whereas by Decision 89/410/EEC (5), the Council 
adopted a specific programme for the completion of 
Eurotra; 
0) OJ No L 302, 24. 10. 1987, p. 1. 
(2) OJ No L 317, 13. 11. 1982, p. 19. 
O OJ No L 341, 4. 12. 1986, p. 39. 
(4) OJ No L 222, 12. 8. 1988, p. 1. 
(*) OJ No L 200, 13. 7. 1989, p. 15. Whereas Decision 82/752/EEC provided that on 
completion of the Eurotra programme an operational 
system prototype should be available in a limited field 
and for limited categories of text; 
Whereas Decision 82/752/EEC included in the 
programme of work for the third phase of the Eurotra 
programme the preparation of a proposal for the further 
development of the system; 
Whereas the revised objectives of the Eurotra 
programme will be achieved, in the main, by 30 June 
1990; 
Whereas remarkable progress has been achieved, as a 
result of the Eurotra programme, in the field of linguistic 
research, to the benefit of all the languages of the 
Community; 
Whereas the programme is expected to produce a 
high-level scientific prototype in the field of machine 
translation; 
Whereas the results of the Eurotra programme are 
expected to constitute a solid basis for the preparation of 
the development of an operational multilingual machine 
translation system for the nine official Community 
languages; 
Whereas the programme is expected to make an 
important contribution to the economic, social and 
cultural cohesion of the Community, and to reconcile 
the benefits of its linguistic plurality with the 
achievement of the objectives of the internal market; 
Whereas the programme constitutes the first step 
towards the development of a practical machine trans­
lation system; 
Whereas additional efforts will have to be made by the 
Community, the Member States and European industry 
in order to reach this objective; 
Whereas the functional, financial and temporal 
conditions for carrying out an evaluation of the 
programme have been met; whereas such an evaluation 
will make it possible to look forward to the creation of 
Community added value as a result of the research 
carried out in this field; 
Whereas the Scientific and Technical Research 
Committee (Crest) has been consulted; 
Whereas the Management and Coordination Advisory 
Committee 'Linguistic Problems' (CGC-12) has delivered 
a favorable opinion; 
22. 8. 90 Official Journal of the European Communities No C 209/25 
Whereas an estimate of the amount of the financial 
contribution of the Community deemed necessary for the 
execution of this programme shall be made; 
Whereas this amount is included in the financial forecast 
annexed to the interinstitutional agreement of 29 June 
1988 O; 
Whereas the credits effectively available will be 
determined by the budgetary procedure according to the 
provisions of the aforementioned interinstitutional 
agreement; 
HAS ADOPTED THE FOLLOWING DECISION: 
Article 1 
A specific research and technological development 
programme concerning the preparation of the devel­
opment of an operational Eurotra system as defined in 
the Annex is hereby adopted for a duration of two years 
starting on 1 July 1990. 
Article 2 
1. The amount of Community funds deemed 
necessary for the execution of the programme adopted 
by this decision is ECU 10 million, including the expen­
diture on five temporary staff. 
2. The budgetary authority shall determine the appro­
priations available for each financial year. 
Article 3 
The modalities of the implementation of the programme 
and the rates of the Community's financial participation 
are set out in the Annex. 
Article 4 
1. During the first quarter of 1993, the Commission 
shall forward a report evaluating the results of this 
programme to the European Parliament and the Council. 
2. The report shall be drawn up by independent 
experts having regard to the objectives set out in the 
Annex and in accordance with Article 2 (2) of Decision 
87/516/Euratom, EEC. Article 5 
1. The Commission shall be responsible for the 
execution of the programme. 
2. The contracts concluded by the Commission shall 
regulate the rights and obligations of each party 
including the modalities for the dissemination, the 
protection and the exploitation of the research results. 
Article 6 
1. The Commission shall be assisted by a committee 
of an advisory nature composed of the representatives of 
the Member States and chaired by the representative of 
the Commission. 
2. The representative of the Commission shall submit 
to the committee a draft of the measures to be taken. 
The committee shall deliver its opinion on the draft, 
within a time limit which the chairman may lay down 
according to the urgency of the matter, if necessary by 
taking a vote. 
3. The opinion shall be recorded in the minutes; in 
addition, each Member State shall have the right to ask 
to have its position recorded in the minutes. 
4. The Commission shall take the utmost account of 
the opinion delivered by the committee. It shall inform 
the committee of the manner in which its opinion has 
been taken into account. 
Article 7 
In accordance with Article 130n of the EEC Treaty, the 
Commission is hereby authorized to negotiate 
agreements with international organizations, third 
countries participating in European cooperation in the 
field of scientific and technological research (COST) and 
European countries having concluded framework 
agreements for scientific and technical cooperation with 
the Community, with a view to associating them wholly 
or partly with the programme. 
Where framework agreements for scientific and technical 
cooperation between European countries and the 
European Communities have been concluded, organiz­
ations and enterprises established in those countries may 
participate in a project undertaken within this 
programme. 
Article 8 
(') OJ No L 185, 15. 7. 1988, p. 33. This Decision is addressed to the Member States. 
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BeVBe^ 
t O^D^ec^ves 
This programme constitutes thefirststep towards the development of an operational machine trans 
lation system of advanced design, capable of dealing with all official Community languages The specific 
objectives of the programme are 
— implementation of a development, testing and research environment capable of supporting 
large-scale systems, 
— e^tensionof the linguistic coverage and large-scale testing of the analysis and synthesis modules 
for all languages covered by Eurotra, 
— the definition of common methods for large-scale development for machine translation and 
other applications involving natural language, 
— experimentation and evaluation of relayed transfer, using an interface structure as pivot, 
— research, prototype implementation and evaluation of new linguistic models aimed at the 
improvement of the interlinguahty of the interface structure and control of overgeneration, 
— research, prototypical implementation and evaluation of methods for the use of subject-field and 
te^t-type specific knowledge for translation and other applications 
— definition of common methods and tools for the integration of existing lexical and termino 
logical collections, 
— participation in the definition of international standards for textual, lexical and terminological 
data, 
— intensive cooperationwith institutes at national level aimed at harmonising lexical and termino­
logical resources and making systems compatible 
— training of researchers and engineers throughagrant scheme, 
— setting-up, experimentation and evaluation of cooperation schemes between research institutes 
and industry 
^ ^D^ry^cUD^^es^^dsc^utl^^^drec^c^cD^e^ 
On the basis of the critical review of the prototype implementations and the specifications 
produced by the end of June t990 the implementation of a system development, testing and 
research environment will be commissioned to the European software industry on a turn-key 
basis 
This environment should have the following characteristics 
— apowerfuland user-friendly formahsmfordescnbinglinguistic facts ^toencode dictionaries 
and grammars^, 
— a special-purpose data management system for the creation and maintenance of largescale 
dictionariesand grammars withspecialuser services for the addition,mspectionandmodifi-
cation of the linguistic data, 
— an efficient rule interpreter capable of dealing with large dictionaries, grammars and te^ts, 
— a set of testing tools with special attention to interactive run-time testing and correction of 
dictionaries and grammars 
22. 8. 90 Official Journal of the European Communities No C 209/27 
The system development environment will pay special attention to modularity to ensure the 
re-usability of the linguistic resources created through the possibility of combining the various 
modules in different ways to fulfil special tasks and of interfacing them with external applications. 
2.2. Language-specific research and development work 
2.2.1. Review and extension of the existing implementations 
For each of the nine languages covered, the analysis and synthesis modules produced by the 
Eurotra programme will be thoroughly reviewed to ensure their generality and adjusted to the 
features of the revised formalism. 
On the basis of these revised implementations the grammatical coverage will be gradually 
extended to include additional text and discourse types. No large-scale lexical and terminological 
development work is planned for this phase pending the outcome of the research on the 
re-usability of lexical and terminological resources (see 2.3 below). 
2.2.2. Relayed transfer 
The research and experimentation are to determine the feasibility of this approach and the 
optimal strategy for its implementation. 
2.3. Linguistic research of general interest 
This action line is intended to gradually improve the linguistic performance of the system and the 
quality of translation. It will be organized along three main directions: 
— general linguistic research to increase the interlinguality of the interface structure and to 
reduce overgeneration, 
— use of subject-field specific knowledge (terminologies, classification schemes, paradigmatic 
relations, domain models, knowledge bases etc.), 
— use of text and discourse type-specific constraints to reduce overgeneration. 
It can be predicted that some progress will be made in the course of this programme, but 
additional efforts must be foreseen for the future. 
2.4. Research into advanced system architectures 
To create a potential for innovation and keep pace with the fast advancement of hardware and 
software technologies a continuous research into new formalisms, software and hardware archi­
tectures is to be foreseen, which will lead in selected cases to experimentation and prototype 
implementations (e.g. parallel system architectures). 
2.5. Re-usability of lexical and terminological resources 
The details of this action line will be defined through project definition studies to be carried out 
in 1989 and 1990. 
It is expected to have two main components: 
— development of methods and tools for the conversion of the formalized parts of existing 
dictionaries which cover mostly orthographic, phonological, morphological and syntactic 
information, 
— research into the utilization of non-formalized portions of dictionaries which concern mostly 
subject classification, discourse types, definitions and examples or citations. This is an 
advanced research topic whose outcome cannot be predicted now. 
No C 209/28 Official Journal of the European Communities 22. 8. 90 
2.6. Standards for textual, lexical and terminological data 
This activity is closely related to the re-usability of linguistic resources in the future. The 
Commission will support and stimulate international activities in this field in close cooperation 
with professional associations and national and international standards organizations. 
2.7. Education and training 
A number of research grants will be awarded to postgraduate students to participate in the 
research and development work in the projects outlined above. 
2.8. Evaluation 
At the end of the programme the results will be evaluated by independent experts. 
3. Modalities of execution 
The various action lines pursue different objectives which demand different forms of organizational, 
contractual and financial schemes. 
3.1. Services contracts 
The implementation of the system development, testing and research environment (action line 2.1) 
which will provide all participating parties with a common set of tools, will be entrusted to 
industrial contractors on the basis of calls for tenders. The proportion of financing which comes 
from the Community budget will be determined in each contract. 
3.2. National research teams 
The work concerning the different languages (action line 2.2) will be carried out by national 
research teams in the Member States, and cofinanced by the Community and the Member States. 
3.3. Shared-cost projects 
The linguistic research of general interest (action line 2.3), research and development into advanced 
system architectures (action line 2.4) and re-usability of lexical and terminological resources (action 
line 2.5) will be carried out as cooperative ventures between industries, research centres and 
Eurotra teams. The specific projects and contractors will be selected on a call for tenders/proposals 
basis. The Community contribution to these projects will be determined on a case-by-case basis but 
may not exceed 50 % under any circumstances. 
3.4. Grants 
Grants will be awarded to scientifically qualified postgraduate students and researchers (at doctoral 
and postdoctoral levels). 
3.5. Subsidies 
The Commission will award subsidies to professional associations and standards organizations for 
action line 2.6. 
4. Indicative break-down of the expenses 
The indicative break-down of the amount of ECU 10 million deemed necessary for the execution of the 
programme is as follows (in ECU 1 000): 
(a) system development environment 2 000 
(b) EC contribution to the national research teams 4 000 
(c) shared-cost research projects 3 000 
(d) training, subsidies, evaluation 1 000 
Total 10 000.