Source: EURLEX
Language: en
Format: md

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 preparation 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 preparation 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 translation 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 development 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 expenditure on five temporary staff.

2. The budgetary authority shall determine the appropriations 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, organizations 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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B e V B e ^

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 terminological 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 ^ r y ^ c U D ^ ^ e s ^ ^ d s c ^ u t l ^ ^ ^ d r e c ^ c ^ c D ^ 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,mspectionandmodification 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 N o 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 architectures 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.