CELEX: 51988PC0270
Language: en
Date: 1988-05-31
Title: Proposal for a COUNCIL DECISION on the transition of the Eurotra programme to the third phase#Proposal for a COUNCIL DECISION concerning a specific programme for the completion of a machine translation system of advanced design (EUROTRA)#(Communication from the Commission)

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 ---pagebreak--- COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES
                                                   COM(88 )  270 final - SYN 137
                                                  Brussels , 31 May 1988
                                   Proposai for a
                                  COUNCIL DECISION
               on the transition of the Eurotra programme to the
                                     third phase
                                   Proposai for a
                                  COUNCIL DECISION
               concerning a specific programme for the completion
                        of a machine translation system of
                                  advanced design
                                      ( EUROTRA )
                       ( Communication from the Commission )
      /(<>'•
 /#
 / '\       'j
 ---pagebreak---                    COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION
Subject : Proposals for a Council Decision on the transition of the EUROTRA
             programme to the third phase and for a Council Decision concerning a
             specific   programme for  the   completion of a machine  translation
             system of advanced design ( EUROTRA ).
I   INTRODUCTION
1.  The Council Decision 86 / 591 / EEC of 26 November 1986 adopting the
    extension of the EUROTRA programme to Spain and Portugal defines the
    following procedure for the phase transition :
    " At the end of each phase , the Council , acting in accordance with the
    procedures laid down in the Treaty , shall decide , on the basis of a report
    from the Commission and the opinion of the Committee referred to in
    Article 3 , whether to move on to the next phase ". The Committee referred
    to    is   the  Management and   Coordination Advisory Committee  " Linguistic
    Problems " ( CGC-12 ).
2.  The statements in the Council Minutes elaborate on the modalities of the
    phase transition :
    " 3 . The Commission confirms that the report of the Commission mentioned in
    the second paragraph of Article 1 will be established in conformity with
    the opinion given on 6 May by the Management and Coordination Advisory
    Committee " Linguistic Problems " ( CGC-12 ). It will be based on an
    evaluation by independent experts ".
3.  The opinion of the CGC-12 as well as the opinion prepared by the European
    Parliament request an assessment of the Eurotra programme by a panel of
    independent experts .
4.  In its decision of the extension of the Programme to Spain and Portugal ,
    the Council agreed on the extension of the duration of the third phase to
    2 years . However , it postponed until the decision on the transition to the
    third phase the allocation of the additional appropriations deemed
    necessary for the execution of the third phase . Indeed , the overall needs
 ---pagebreak---                                                    2
       for the third phase were and are estimated by the Commission and the
      CGC–12 at 12 million ECU ( of which 5.5 million ECU were allocated by the
       initial  1982 decision ,    subject , according to the 1986 decision ,             to the
      transition to the third phase , and an additional amount of 6.5 million ECU
       is needed because of the increase from A2 to 72 language pairs and the
      extension in the duration of the third phase from 18 to 24 months ).
5.    The    Council    Decision    87 / 516 / EURATOM ,    EEC    concerning     the  Framework
      Programme    for    Community     activities       in   the    field    of   research  and
      technological development ( 1987 to 1991 ) recalls in Article 1.3 that an
      amount of 1.084 million ECU has been deemed necessary in respect of
      research programmes already decided or under way . This amount covers the
      5.5 million ECU already allocated by Council Decision 82 / 752 / EEC as
      amended by Council Decision 86 / 591 / EEC .
6.    The Council Decision 87 / 516 / EURATOM , EEC , by declaring EUROTRA a specific
      programme in the activity of linguistic problems under the Framework
      Programme , requires a different procedure for its implementation . This
      procedure , indeed , must conform to the provisions of Article 130 Q , 2 . of
      the Treaty .
7 . - The purpose of this document is , therefore , twofold :
      - on the one hand , it is to inform the Council about the execution by the
         Commission   of    the   Decision       extending     the    Eurotra    Programme , the
         objectives and the modalities of the third phase , and the way in which
         the Commission     intends to      implement the       recommendations made by the
         Assessment   Panel ;   it   requests        the  Council     to  adopt    the  proposal
         concerning the transition to the third phase ( which already covers an
         appropriation of 5.5 million ECU ) ;
      - on the other hand , it is . to request a Council decision on a specific
         programme under action line 8.4 of the Framework Programme for the
         allocation of an additional amount of 6.5 million ECU necessary for the
         completion of the third phase . This amount is part of the overall amount
         foreseen in the Framework Programme for the implementation of action
         line 8.4 and corresponds to the additional 6.5 million ECU already
         proposed by the Commission in 1985 and on which the Council postponed
         its decision .
                                                                                                 3
 ---pagebreak---                                            3
 II   THE ASSESSHENT OF EUROTRA BY ft PANEL OF INDEPENDENT EXPERTS
 8.  Following the request from the Council and the European Parliament and the
     advice of the CGC-12 , the terms of reference for the assessment of the
     programme were drawn , so as to include the following points :
     - the quality of the scientific approach and especially its suitability as
        a basis for the work of the third phase and later ^ industrial
        development ) ;
     - the results achieved ;
    - the relationship of the approaches chosen for Eurotr * with the general
        trends of advanced research on natural language processing ;
    - the impact of Eurotra on machine translation and natural language
        processing research ;
    - the    setting    of the priorities  for  machine   translation    and natural
        language processing in national research policies and programmes both in
       the Community and in third countries ( USA , Japan , Canada , etc .);
    - the suitability of the organizational structure for the programme itself
       and as a model for other projects ;
    - the management of the programme .
9.  In order to cover this broad range of requirements , and in agreement with
    the advice given by the CGC-12 , the personalities selected for the panel
    were to be able to cover not only the scientific and technical aspects of
    the programme , but also questions on the management of complex projects
    and on both industrial and public research policies . Furthermore , the
    CGC-12 recommended that at least one of the panel members - preferably an
    expert in computational linguistics – should be chosen from outside the
    Community .
 ---pagebreak---                                           4
10 . In order to accomodate these requirements , the Commission appointed the
     following personalities :
     – Dr. A.E. PANNENBORG ( NL )–             Chairman    –   former     Vice-Chairman
                                               of    the   Board     of   Directors    of
                                               Philips .
     – Mr A. DANZiN ( F ) -
     -                     –                   former President of Thompson CSF
                                               and   of   INRIA ( National      Research
                                               Institute      of     Informatics      and
                                               Automation ),     assisted    by    Mr  H.
                                               DIEUZEIDE ,    from    the Ministry of
                                               Education .
 •*    Prof.. S. ALLEN ( S )-
     - Prof                                    Permanent       Secretary       of     the
                                               Swedish Academy of Sciences and
                                               Professor         of       computational
                                               linguistics at the University of
                                               Gothenberg .
     - Prof. H. STEUSLOFF ( D )-               Director      of       the    Fraunhofer
                                               Institut     fuer     Datenverarbeitung
                                               ( data processing ) and        Professor
                                               of     computer      science     at    the
                                               University of Karlsruhe .
11 . Furthermore the Commission appointed Dr. Helen Henderson ( U.K. ) Director
     of IME    ( Information Management & Engineering Ltd .,       London ) to be an
     independent scientific secretary to the Panel .
12 . After a number of preliminary discussions with the members of the Panel in
     early Spring 1987 , the work of assessment started in May , and the final
     report was submitted at the end .of October .
13 . The programme of work was subdivided in two periods :
     May-July - Fact-finding : the members of the Panel interviewed at length
     the various actors in the Programme : the national research teams carrying
 ---pagebreak---                                              5
      out   the   work , those   responsible   in  the  ministries       and / or research
      administrations for the national financial contributions , the Chairmen and
     members    of the    various committees    concerned  ( CGC-12 ,    Common Steering
     Committee ,   Liaison Group ) and both the top management and the Eurotra
      project team in the Commission . The findings of this period are contained
      in an interim report submitted at the end of July .
     August-October - conclusions and recommendations             in this period che
     Panel analysed the information gathered and formulated a number of
     conclusions and recommendations which are contained in the final report
     together with an account of the findings . The report is annexed to this
     document for information ( see Annex 3 ). Its findings and recommendations
     are indicated in the following pages .
14 . The Commission has analysed the report and appreciated its               positive and
     constructive character . It will make every effort to overcome a number of
     shortcomings which are critized ( especially the lack of       human resources in
     its own project team ). The Commission also believes             that it is in a
     position to implement the recommendations made in the            report within the
     Eurotra programme including the preparation of its               transition to an
     industrial development phase . Spin-off actions based on       the results of the
     mainstream Eurotra and the extension to other activities which are not
     included in the Eurotra programme will be subject to a further proposal by
     the Commission on the " language industry ", taking into consideration ,
     inter alia , the results of the Eurotra programme .
15 . In its proposal for the transition of the Eurotra programme to the third
     phase , the Commission is taking the report from the Assessment Panel fully
     into account .
III . FINDINGS AND RECOmENDATIOIMS OF THE ASSESSMENT PANEL
16 . The   Panel    has  identified   four distinct    objectives      for    the  Eurotra
     programme :
     - polit ica 1
     - éducation and training
     – scientific and technical ( basic and applied research )
     – economic ( industrial development )
                                                                                      £
 ---pagebreak---      It notes , however , that the latter was not originally spelt out in the
     Council Decision adopting Eurotra .
17 . As the primary political goal the Panel sees the development of a strong
     European    competence   in the   field  of machine   translation ( and natural
     language processing in general ).
18 . The   Panel   particular ! y appreciated   the degree  of  success achieved  in
     setting up an effective basis for cooperation between so many research
     groups spread across the Community . It considers that the value of the
     experience gained in this aspect of the exercise is inestimable and
     expects a long-term benefit from the network of experts created through
     this cooperation .
19 . The Panel    sees also a beneficial     side-effect in the creation of a much
     greater awareness of the importance of research which helps to facilitate
     communication between different countries of the Community .
20 . The Panel criticizes , however , the lack in Europe of a stable long-term
     policy which is required for the development of a European competence . It
     also notes that due to the lack of stability there is a chronic shortage
     of qualified personnel in Europe , and that in some cases Eurotra itself
     has suffered because it did not succeed in attracting the most qualified
     and experienced staff .
21 . The education and training goal , which is closely related to the political
     goal , is seen as a beneficial side–effect of Eurotra . Due to the absence
     of experienced staff the Eurotra teams have been built up with
     enthusiastic young graduates who are " learning on the job ". In some ‘cases
     they are preparing theses based on their work in Eurotra , which gives the
     project increased academic recognition , and in some countries , graduate
     courses in computational linguistics have been established thanks to their
     participation in Eurotra .
22 . The Commission is aware of the lack of qualified scientists not only for
     the needs of Eurotra , but also of other projects involving natural
     language processing . It acknowledges the beneficial side–effect of Eurotra
 ---pagebreak---                                            7
     with res pact to this , but it considers that Eurotra alone is by far
      insufficient to compensate for all the deficiencies , especially in view of
      the creation of a European language industry .
23 . The Panel sees as the scientific and technical goal the strengthening of
     the linguistic foundations through research before the system , ultimately
     to be realized , can be specified .
24 . The Panel confirms the soundness of the linguistic approach and of the
     general system design , although it notes that the viability of both is
     still to be proven . It notes the problems of efficiency with the first
     prototype implementation of the software and recommends a particular
     effort of research into new software and possibly hardware architectures
     to ensure the practicability of the approach . As one of the beneficial
     side-effects the Panel noted that Eurotra has encouraged new directions in
     linguistic research .
25 . The Panel   stresses the   vital  importance of the creation of a machine
     translation prototype for the further evaluation, of the linguistic model .
     A good prototype can provide feedback to research and be a tool to prove
     the practicability of the project . It notes that the quality of the final
     result of research can only be assessed when a large volume of material
     has been processed .
26 . With regard to the present achievements the Panel acknowledges that
     substantial progress has been made but considers that the ultimate goal is
     still a long way off , and recommends the continuation of the research
     effort   within  Eurotra   and   its   re-inforcement through  spin-off  and
     follow-up research projects .
27 . The Commission intends to implement this recommendation both in the Third
     Phase of Eurotra and in an action plan concerning linguistic problems
     which will be presented to the Council in due time , taking in particular
     into account the results of the Eurotra programme . It believes , however ,
     that a global strategy including research is needed .
 ---pagebreak---                                                 8
 28 . The economic goal is to produce an advanced , useable , effective machine
        translation system , ultimately an " industrial " product ( or a multitude of
        products )   which  could   be    commercially  profitable for  the Community
       Institutions and both for the public and private sector in the Member
        states .
 29 . The Panel criticizes the absence of a clear definition of an economic goal
       in the original Council Decision itself , and its recommendations aim to
       rectify this situation .
 30 . Indeed , in 1982 - approximately seven years before the prospective end of
       the Eurotra programme - the Council was not in a position to specify the
      nature of the ultimate industrial product and stated clearly that :
       (a)     the industrial development of the Eurotra system will not be put in
               hand until this programme has been completed , and
       ( b)    as an integral part of the’ Third Phase of the programme an
               evaluation of the technical and economic performance of the system
               is to be carried out ,      and a proposal for the development of an
               operational system on an industrial scale and for proceeding to the
               stage of commercial exploitation is to be prepared .
31 . The Panel acknowledges that - in mid-1987 , i.e. almost five years after
      the Council Decision - " as so often in research , one can judge the quality
      of    the  effort  undertaken . . . but  one cannot  be sure about the ultimate
      effectiveness of the results in economic terms ".
32 . At the same time the Panel states very forcefully the need for a
      delineation between the research phase and the subsequent and necessarily
      overlapping development phase , which is necessary in order to derive a
      system to be used in practice .
33 . The solution proposed by the Panel is the separation of research and
      development , and the transfer of the development to an industrial footing .
      It also suggests that for the development a staggered approach should be
      taken : " development of practical applications of the results of research
      leading towards the production of a fully operational automatic
      translation system ".
 ---pagebreak---                                           9
34 . The Panel itself has identified a long list of areas for exploitation
     based on the outcome of the Eurotra programme ranging from spoiling
     checkers to aids for speech handicapped people .
35 . Together with the ultimate primary goal , i.e. the multilingual translation
     system , this list constitutes a programme of work for the future European
     language industry which must be examined on its own merits in due time
     after a definition study has been completed in parallel .
36 . With regard to the specific objective of Eurotra to include the nine
     Community languages and 72 language pairs , the Panel observes rightly that
     the Community Institutions are likely to be the only customer for the
     whole system . It ought to be noted , however , that the modular structure of
     the system will allow the particular translation needs in each of the         .
     Member states , both in the public and the private sector , to be covered .
37 . The Panel recognizes that the cost of the development of a practical
     system cannot be estimated at the present time and recommends that a study
     about the definition and the cost of a practical Eurotra system should be
     carried out . This study will be started immediately .
38 . The Panel is , however , certain that the funds for Eurotra in its present
     conception , committed or earmarked now , will not be sufficient for this
     purpose and warns against any attempt to squeeze such activities into the
     present budgets , as it would kill the continuation of the research effort ,
     and would lead to a very imperfect system .
39 . With this , the Panel recommends very clearly that the budget earmarked for
     the Third Phase of Eurotra should be dedicated to the continuation of the
     present programme and the preparation of the industrial development ,
     whilst new funds and organizational structures should be created for the
     development of a commercial system .
40 . The Panel notes also that the present organizational structure of Eurotra ,
     which is recognized as appropriate – with the necessary improvements – for
     a cooperative applied research project , cannot be envisaged for an
     industrial development project which needs systems management with full
     hierarchical power of direction .
                                                                                   Ίϋ
 ---pagebreak---                                                 10 -
 41 . The present Eurotra teams , which are almost exclusively university-based ,
      are certainly not suited to carry out industrial development work , nor
       should they be distracted from their principal vocation , i.e. basic and
      applied research . It has been recognized that the progress of Eurotra has
      been hampered by the lack of expertise in the field of natural language
      processing and that the available and future human resources will be
      needed for the continuation and acceleration of the programme . Therefore ,
      special provisions must be made for the transfer                  of    expertise  and
      technology to those involved in its development .
42 . It is unlikely that the " industrial development of Eurotra " can actually
      be seen as a monolithic pro^ramma based on a monolithic organization . One
      must foresee the development of a multitude of products and subproducts ,
      and hence a multitude of projects with an appropriate management structure
      for each of them .
43 . The    Panel    considers    it   desirable   that   there  should    be   a  permanent
      association between the teams working in the programme and the candidate
      organizations for the creation of a language industry in order to identify
      commercially exploitable objectives , but it notes that at present
      commercial companies show some reluctance to get involved , because they
      all perceive Eurotra as being nearer to the research stage than the
      development stage .
44 . The Panel      has also noted that       there is    an inherent lack of suitably
      qualified people in Europe , and that Eurotra competes with other projects .
      This is true both for research and industrial development . " Language
      engineering " is an unknown profession as . yet , and any large development
      project will suffer from this lack . It is therefore urgent to stimulate
      the training of computational linguists oriented towards development and
      not primarily research .
45 . The European language          industry  is expected     to become a key economic
      sector ,   but it does not exist as        such , and it must be created .      Public
      funds    contribution    ( Community   and   Member   States ) can    accelerate   its
      creation by stimulating the investment of private capital on a commercial
      and industrial basis .
 ---pagebreak---                                              11
 IV    FOLLOW-UP OF THE RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE ASSESSMENT PANEL BY THE COMMISSION
 46 . The Commission acknowledges the recognition given by the Assessment Panel
       to the impact of Eurotra with regard to its political and educational
       goals , and especially the impact of the programme in European cooperation
       and the stimulation of research in this field . It agrees especially with
       the need for a stable long-term policy both at national and Community
       level , since Eurotra alone is certainly not sufficient .
47 . With regard to the scientific and technical goals , the Commission notes
      the endorsement given by the Panel both to the linguistic and to the
       system design approaches and agrees with the recommendation to pursue the
       present programme in order to prove the ultimate viability of its results .
48 . As far as the economic goals are concerned , the Commission agrees that the
      preparation of the transition of Eurotra from applied research to
       industrial development and the involvement of industrial partners for this
      development must begin immediately .
49 . The Commission intends to implement the recommendations of the Panel as
      follows :
      - within     the  Eurotra  programme .    the necessary , adjustments of the
         objectives and of the programme of work will be made in order to
         improve its probability of 'Success and its suitability as a basis for an
         industrial development ; moreover a study about the definition and the
         cost of a practical Eurotra system will be carried out .
      – outside the Eurotra programme , ttoe Commission will launch a study on the
         definition and prospects of a European language industry .
50 . The Council Decision adopting Eurotra foresees the possibility of a
      participation of third countries in the programme in virtue of Article 228
      of the Treaty and authorizes the Commission to negotiate the cooperation
      agreements .
 ---pagebreak---                                           12 -
51 . Exploratory talks with Switzerland , which shares three languages with the
     Community , have taken place during the second phase of the programme , so
     that the conclusion of a cooperation agreement , which would be
     advantageous for all parties concerned , can be expected in the near
     future , in order to start implementation from the beginning of the third
     phase .
V    IMPLEMENT ATI ON OF THE PROGRAMME EXTENSION AND PROGRESS OF WORK
52 . Following the Council Decision or 26 November 1986 , the Commission
     negotiated the Contracts of Association with the Spanish and Portuguese
     authorities . The contract with Spain was signed in December 1986 and that
     with Portugal in April 1987 .
53 . Both contracts foresee an effective duration of two years for the
     achievement of the goals of the second phase of the programme . In view of
     the time necessary for the creation of the internal structures and for the
     recruitment and training of the respective research teams , the actual
     start-up of the work has taken place between July and October 1987 .
54 . The programmes of work of both the Spanish and the Portuguese teams have
     been geared in such a way that some initial analysis results will become
     available   in time   to allow for transfer work with a limited coverage
     before the end of the second phase .
55 . The Programme of Work which is being prepared for the third phase will
     take into account the special situation of the Spanish and Portuguese
     languages . The various options concerning the goals of the third phase
     with regard to these languages and the ways of achieving them will be
     agreed upon with the competent authorities and set out in the contracts of
     association covering the third phase .
 ---pagebreak---                                             13
 56 . For the rest of the programme , the work has proceeded along the lines set
       out in the general programme of work , fill contracts of association have
       been signed and the research teams established . All teams have prepared
       programmes of work which aim at achieving the goals of the second phase by
       the required date .
 57 . The Commission has prepared a set of documents including
      - a detailed programme of work for the rest of the second phase aiming at
         achieving the system goal set out by the Council ;
      - a programme of work for the third phase ;
      - a set of conditions which are to be met for an orderly start-up of the
         third phase .
58 . The start-up conditions for the third phase concern in particular :
      - the state of the general linguistic specifications ;
      - the state of development of the basic Eurotra software and           user
         environment with regard to speed , functional requirements and      user
         friendliness ;
      - the working and testing methodology to be adopted for the third phase ;
      - the tools and methods required for the creation of the mono– and
         bilingual dictionaries during the third phase ;
      - the evaluation criteria for the results of the third phase .
59 . Both the national groups and the various teams involved in operations of
      general interest are making a considerable effort to keep to schedule . The
      efficiency of the basic software which has been so far one of the major
      concerns , is being improved . Furthermore , the design of the virtual
      machine has stabilised sufficiently to make the involvement of external
      professional assistance feasible . Preparation for such partic ipation has
      started .
60 With regard to the user environment and the creation and maintenance of
      fairly large grammars and dictionaries , a generalised relational data base
      management system has been selected , and work is progressing on the design
      of the database structure , its interface with the kernel system and the
      design of the tools for system creation and testing .
 ---pagebreak---                                          14
61 . The time-table for the allocation of the necessary appropriations by the
     budgetary authorities has caused the end of the second phase to be moved
     to mid-1988 . The Commission is confident that the goals of the current
     phase can be achieved by this time within the available financial envelope .
62 . In order to ensure continuity of the programme it is essential that an
     agreement is reached on the third phase before that date .
VI   OBJECTIVES AND PROGRAMME OF WORK OF THE THIRD PHASE
63 . In determining the objectives and the content of the third phase ,       the
     Commission has taken into account the following :
     - the goals set out in the Council Decisions of 1982 and 1986 ;
     - the recommendations of CGC-12 contained in the opinion of 6 May 1986 ;
     - the report of the Assessment Panel ;
     - the statements contained in the Council Minutes of 26 November 1986 ;
     - the experience gained in the implementation of the programme to–date .
64 . In agreement with the Assessment Panel , the Commission considers that the
     creation of an operational prototype machine translation system as one of
     the primary technical . goals of the programme is vital , since this
     prototype is to provide the basis for the evaluation of the linguistic
     model , give feedback to research and ultimately prove the practicability
     of the system .
65 . In order to achieve this objective , a balanced approach along three main
     lines will be pursued :
     - linguistic research ;
     - linguistic implementation work ;
     - system design and development of software tools .
     In parallel , the industrial development and the involvement of industrial
     partners will be prepared .
 ---pagebreak---                                            15 -
 66 For the duration of the Programme the implementation work carried out by
      the national teams is necessary in order to test the research results , to
      improve the prototype and to guide the applied research activities through
      continuous feedback .
67 . The proposed size of the prototype system to be developed should permit
     significant conclusions to be made about the qualitative performance and
     the extensibility of the system . The vocabulary of approximately 20,000
     entries is estimated to be the minimum necessary to cover a limited and
     homogeneous subject field . Only such a coverage will make it possible to
     test the system against real texts .
68 . The Commission considers that the goal of approximately 20,000 entries
     should be achieved within the existing structures and resources for a
     significant number of languages and language pairs .
69 . The Commission is aware of the fact that this goal can only be achieved if
     competent human resources , appropriate tools for the creation and
     maintenance of dictionaries and lexicographic and terminological resources
     are made available . In relation to the latter , the Commission is aware
     that not all languages are covered equally           for some languages and
     language pairs existing lexicographic and terminological resources are
     deficient or totally absent . This fact may make it difficult to achieve
     fully the programme goal of 20,000 dictionary entries with respect to some
     of the languages and language pairs .
70 . All national teams have been requested to make an inventory of lexical and
     terminological resources concerning their languages . On the basis of this
     inventory it will be possible to take the appropriate measures to improve
     the balance of resources between languages .
71 . Eurotra is too limited a project to attempt to compensate totally for
     inadequate lexical and terminological coverage , especially to cover the
     requirements for an industrial development or other NLP applications . For
     this reason , new proposals will have to be presented later on on these
     aspects .
 ---pagebreak---                                                16
 72 . The work on software is to continue throughout the third phase . On the one
       hand this is to cower the growing requirements of the project itself with
       regard to quantitative demands ( grammars , dictionaries , text samples ),
       speed    to    make    extensive     testing   possible ,   expressiveness    and
       user-friendliness of the system .
 73 . On the other hand , a number of problems exist with regard to speed and
       space   requirements .  To  find  a   solution  for  these   problems , which  is
       crucial for an industrial development , advanced software - and possibly
       hardware - architectures will be explored .
74 . For this purpose special professional skills from outside the present
      Eurotra community will be increasingly involved and links with other
      projects within the Framework Programme will be sought .
75 . With respect to the linguistic work it is estimated that a balance between
      applied research and implementation work in the national research teams
      can   be   maintained .  Whilst   the   implementation  work    is  ultimately  to
      contribute to the final system goal , throughout the Third Phase it will
      serve as a test bed for the incorporation and evaluation of the results of
      the applied research work .
76 . The principal purpose of the applied linguistic research is to improve the
      qualitative performance of the system . The two main lines of applied
      research aim at the improvement of the interlingual basis of the interface
      structure on the one hand ( so as to minimise transfer ), and at
      disambiguation on the other ( extending , especially semantic features and
      relations and contrastive studies , semantics , and increasingly introducing
      AI techniques ).
77 . The Panel      has  recognized   the effectiveness    of the    present programme
      management structure , which allows for a certain flexibility in the
      guidance of the work and for repeated discussion in which direction to
      proceed in certain details . In particular , the Panel notes that the
      Liaison Group works surprisingly well considering the number of disparate
      scientific opinions represented , and that this Community programme does
      appear to be going ahead well using such an unorthodox method .
 ---pagebreak---                                            17 -
 78 For the Third Phase of the programme a number of changes and adjustments
      are planned in order to accomodate the new needs and requirements of the
      programme . They concern in particular :
      - the composition and the task allocation of the central team in the
        Commission ;
     - the profile of the language groups which will have to take into account
        tha changing needs , especially with regard to lexicographic work ;
     - the precise role of the Irish group concerning the terminological work
        and its interaction with the language groups ;
     - the precise role of the Luxembourg group as documentation center and
        test and reference center and clearing house for the software ;
     - the organization of the linguistic research work of general interest to
        be carried out by the national teams , and especially the creation of
        centres of excellence for the various subjects involved ;
     - the coordination of the research on the general system design and basic
        software ;
     - the cooperation with third parties for the implementation of the Eurotra
        software ;
     - the involvement of third parties in specific areas of the linguistic
        work ( especially lexicography );
     - the mechanisms of transfer of expertise and technology to third parties
        in preparation for the industrial development .
79 . The preparation for an industrial development will start immediately in
     order to enable the European industry to use the results of the Eurotra
     programme appropriately . It is also expected that an early involvement of
     industry should influence positively the direction and results of the
     research work and improve its interaction with the research teams .
VII GENERAL COmUNITV STRATEGY IN THE FIELD OF LINGUISTIC PROBLEMS
80 . With Eurotra the Commission has launched the first Community R&D programme
     in the field of linguistic problems . One of the objectives of Eurotra is
     to   stimulate   research and development   in this  field and  to create a
     catalyst effect for spin-off and follow-up programmes .
 ---pagebreak---                                              18
 81 . Both at national and Community level this effect has been achieved and a
       number of projects started ,    which make direct or indirect reference to
       Eurotra .
82 . Also thanks ,    inter alia ,  to Eurotra the importance of natural    language
       processing for the success of the advanced information technologies is
       being progressively recognised ,    and the concept of a European language
       industry  as  an   autonomous  economic   sector  is gaining  acceptance and
       support .
83 . The Commission      has  started  reflections  about ways  to develop a more
      favourable environment for the language industry , which tould serve as a
      supply industry at least five large economic sectors          translation and
       interpretation , information services , language teaching , office automation
      and publishing .
VIII     CONCLUSIONS
84 . The Eurotra programme is now at full cruising speed , with teams working in
      all twelve Member states .
85 . Considerable efforts are being made by all those involved in the programme
      to reach the objectives of the second phase and to create the conditions
      for an orderly start up of the third phase .
86 . The Commission considers that both conditions will be met by mid-1988 and
      proposes that the third phase of Eurotra starts on 1 July 1988 .
87 . The Commission requests the Council to adopt the proposals concerning the
      phase transition and a specific programme for the completion of a machine
      translation system of advanced design ( EUROTRA ).
 ---pagebreak---                                           19 -
             Proposal for a Council Decision on the adoption of the transition of
             the EUROTRA Programme to the third phase .
 –     i .   Proposal for a Council Decision concerning a specific programme for
             the completion of a machine translation sytem of advanced design
             ( EUROTRA ).
ANNEX I'     EUROTRA Assessment Panel Final Report
ANNEX H      Programme of work of the Third Phase
ANNEX m      Financial statement " A "
ANNEX TV     Financial statement " B "
ANNEX V    . Draft opinion of the CGC-12
                                                                                  Ζο
 ---pagebreak---                                              Proposai for a
                                           COUNCIL DECISION
                                          on the transition
                         of the Eurotra programme to the third phase
 THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES
 Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community ,
 Having regard to             Council Decision 82 / 7S2 / EEC of 4 November 1982       on
 the       adoption  of  a  European      Economic   Community   research and development
 programme for a machine translation system of advanced design^ ^s amended by
 Decision 86/ 591 / EEC ^ , and in particular the second paragraph of Article 1
 thereof ,
Having regard to the proposal from the Commission ,
Having regard to the opinion of the European Parliament               ,
Having regard to the opinion of the Economic and Social Committee v           ,
Whereas          Decision     82 / 752 / EEC     states     that    at
the end of each phase of the above mentioned programme ( called EUROTRA ) the
Council , acting in accordance with the procedures laid down in the Treaty ,
shall decide , on the basis of a report from the Commission and the opinion of
the Management and Coordination Advisory Committee " Linguistic Problems "
( CGC-12 ) whether to move on to the next phase ,
( 1 )0 . J. N° L 317 , 13.11.1982 , p. 19
( 2 )0 . J. N° L 341 , 04.12.1986 , p. 39
( 3 ) 0 . J.
( 4 ) 0 . J.
                                                                                          21
 ---pagebreak---                                                                                                     %
                                                  - 2 -
   Whereas Decision 07 / 516 / EURA7OM , EEC              concerning the framework programme
   for Community activities in the field of research and technological
   development       ( 1907 to 1991 )   recalls    in Article    1(3 ) that an amount of       1084
   million ECU has been deemed             necessary     in  respect of research programmes
   already decided or under way ;
  Whereas EUROTRA is among those programmes already decided and under way with
   an    amount     of   5.5 Million    ECU  deemed    necessary    by   the  said    Decision   •
  82 / 752 / EEC    for . its . third phase ;
  Whereas      the     objectives  of   the second     phase of    the Eurotra     Programme are
  expected to be achieved in the course of 1988 within the budgetary resources
  allocated by the budgetary authority ;
  Whereas the Eurotra programme has been assessed by a panel of independent
  experts , whose recommendations have been incorporated by the Commission in the
  definition of the orientations for the third phase ;
  Whereas        all    twelve   Member    States    are    actively    partic ipating    in    the
   implementation of the Programme ;
  Whereas it is essential to start immediately preparations for the transition
  of the Eurotra programme to an industrial development phase ;
  Whereas CGC-12 has been consulted and has delivered a positive opinion on the
  transition to the third phase ;
  Whereas      the    Scientific   and Technical      Research Committee      ( CREST ) has   been
  consu 1 ted ,
  ( 5 ) O.J. N° L 302 . 24.10.1987 , p. 1
h
 ---pagebreak---                                                                                        1
                                            3
HAS DECIDED AS    FOLLOWS   :
Sole Article
The  Eurotra    Programme     as adopted by   Decision 62 / 752 / EEC   and amended by
Decision 86 / 591 / EEC shall move on to the third phase on 1 July 1988 .
Done at Brussels                                                   For the Council
                                                                  The President
 ---pagebreak---                                                                                      \o
                                         Proposai for a
                                        COUNCIL DECISION
                                concerning a specific programme
                 for the completion of a machine translation system of
                                 advanced design ( EUROTRA )
THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES
Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community and
 in particular Article 130 Q (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 130 k of the Treaty stipulates that the Framework Programme
shall be implemented through specific programmes developed within each
activity ;
Whereas the Council , by adopting the Framework Programme of Community research
                                                     (2)
and technological developement ( 1987 – 1991 )           , acknowledges the interest
of an action on linguistic problems within the activity 8.4 , Dissemination and
utilization of S/T research results ;
(D
( 2)0 . J. N° L 302 , 24.10.1987 . p. 1
 ---pagebreak---                                                     2
  Whereas          by    its     Decisión     82 / 752 / EEC ( 3 ) , as amended by       Decisión
  86/591 /EEC (4> , the
  86/ 591 / EEC     the COUKIL
                        Cotncil      adopted a European Economic Community research and
 development programme          for a   machine translation           system of advanced design
 ( EUROTRA ) ;
Whereas the Eurotra programme has               boon assessed by a panel of              independent
 experts , whose recommendations have been incorporated by the Commission in the
definition of the orientations for the third phase
Whereas by its Decision ../.../ EEC of . , the Council has decided ^xn
the transition of the EUROTRA programme to its third phase /
Whereas        in agreement with the       opinions     of   the Management and Coordination
Advisory Committee !'Linguistic Problems " ( CGC-12 ) of 6 May 1986 and 25 January
1988 , the financial requirements for the completion of the third phase of the
EUROTRA programmme have been estimated at an extra amount of 6.5 Million ECU ;
Whereas         the   Management    and  Coordination        Advisory      Committee    " Linguistic
Problems " ( CGC-12 ) has delivered its opinion }
Whereas        the Scientific    and   Technical     Research Committee       ( CREST ),   has  been
consulted ,
HAS    ADOPTED THIS DECISION      :
Article 1
1.     A specific programme for the completion             in 1990 of a machine translation
       system of advanced design ( EUROTRA ) is hereby adopted .
2.    The content and the duration of the programme are set out in Decision 82/752/ EEC .
( 3 ) OJ No L 317 , 13:11.1982 , p. 19
( 4 ) OJ No L 341 , 4.12.1986 , p.39
 ---pagebreak---                                                                                 II
                                         з -
 3    The detailed rules for the implementation of this specific program# are
      set out in the Annex .
Art j c le 2
Without prejudice to the amount of 5.5 Million ECU already deemed necessary by
 Decision .. 82 / 752 / EEC , the amount deemed necessary for the completion of
the Eurotra programme shall be 6.5 Million ECU .
Artide 3
This Decision is addressed to the Member States .
Done at Brussels .                                       F° r the Council
                                                         The President
 ---pagebreak---                                                                                          /}
                                           ANNEX
I_ OBJE CTIVES
   The objective of the specific programme is , on the one hand , the execution
   of the supplementary tasks required in the third phase of EUROTRA by the
    inclusion of Spanish and Portuguese which had two effects on the original
   programme of work :
        ( a ) the number of language pairs increased from 42 to 72 , and
        ( b ) the duration of the third phase was extended by six months .
   On the other hand , this specific programme is intended to reinforce two
   critical areas pointed out by the assessment made during its second phase ,
   i.e. , software development and the preparations for industrial involvement .
2_ RU LES FOR IMPLEMENTING THE PROGRAMME
   1 .        The  Commission   shall   be  responsible   for   the  execution    of the
              programme ,  in  particular    by  moans   of   research    contracts  and
              contracts   of  association    which   will   define    the    rights  and
              obligations of each party including , where appropriate , conditions
              and procedures for possible royalty payments and for the repayment
              of the contributions made by the Community .
   2.         The indicative internal breakdown of the amount deemed necessary of
              6.5 million ECUS is as follows :
       ( a ) Community contributions to the national groups               4.4 MECU
       ( b ) Basic software                                               1.1 MECU
       ( c ) Linguistic spécifications                                     .2 MECU
       ( d ) Workshops , supplies , etc ...                                .1 MECU
       ( e ) Preparatory activities concerning the transition
              towards an industrial system                                 .7 MECU
                                                        TOTAL            65 MECU
                                                                                            Z1
 ---pagebreak---                                  ANNEX I
EUROTRA ASSESSMENT PANEL
      Final Report
       October 1987
                  EUROTRA SECRETARIAT
                 Information Management &
                   Engineering Ltd
                 14-16 Farringdon Lane
                 London EC1R 3AU
                 England
                 Telephone : + 44 1 253 1177
                 Telefax :   + 44 1 251 8646
                                         п
 ---pagebreak---              FINAL REPORT OF EÜROTRA ASSESSMENT PANEL
                             Contents
 INTRODUCTION
 HISTORY
 GOALS
 Summary of goals
 EUROTRA approach
 Resources
 Research vs development
National vs European goals
Potential for exploitation
Achievability
ACHIEVEMENTS
General impression
Planning ana control
Quality of work
Industrial involvement
ORGANISATIONAL AND FINANCIAL
Advisory and Management Committees
Central Operations
National Groups
SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL
Reference manual
Linguistic aspects
System architecture
CONCLUSIONS
RECOMMENDATIONS
I      EUROTRA
II     Research
III    Development
                     Final Report - Page 1
 ---pagebreak---     APPENDICES
    A          Progress Achievea Against Targets
    B          Organisation and Financial Aspects
    C          Technical Aspects
    D          Interviews to 30 June 1987
    E          Biographies of Panel Memoers
                                  ASSESSMENT PANEL
   Chairman :       Dr A E Pannenborg
   Members :        Mr Andre Danzin
                    Professor Fil Dr Sture Allén
                    Prof Dr rer nat Hartwig Steusloff
                    Mr Henri Dieuzeide
   Secretariat :    Mrs Helen Henaerson
                   Mr Peter Vickers
                    Mrs Leslie Anne Ferber
31                            Final Report - Page 2
 ---pagebreak---   1.  INTRODUCTION
          •  >
  1   EUROTRA is unique .
      It is unique in various respects :
      - it is the most ambitious project in the world undertaken so far
      in the field of machine translation , with a budget of over 16
      million ECU and up to 150 specialists working on the project at any
      one time ;
      - it strives to build a common system to cover all translations .
      between nine different languages whereas most other projects limit
      themselves to two languages or a few at most ;
     - the approach chosen for the research part of the project is ,
      basically , a linguistic one promising a much more solid and
      systematic science base for the concepts needed than any other
      system either existing or under development ;
     - it represents , for once , a sizable project in the field of
     humanities as distinct from the field of science and .technology .
2    EUROTRA has been set up through the unusual mechanism of national
     contracts of association to mobilize the necessary potential in the
     field of computational linguistics throughout the territory of the
     Community . This can only be understood from the historical
     perspective . It has taken a considerable number of years to
     develop the concept of EUROTRA. An essential element was provided
     by the Council decision that all official community languages will
     receive equal attention. This necessitates a more systematic
     fundamental approach than was needed in any previous project. No
     previous experience was available for the management of a project
     of this degree of complexity. The management problem was
     aggravated by the lack of central staff , but this was mitigated
     initially through the effective services provided by the Swiss
     organisation ISSCO. The present , somewhat cumbersome structure for
     supervision and coordination has evolved gradually in an almost
     empirical way from the needs for management.
3    Most of the Groups participating in the project form part of , or
     are associated with , a university . Already one can observe that in
     this way EUROTRA has contributed to an appreciable increase of
     awareness of and research potential' in the field of computational
     linguistics . This fact together with the multilingual aspects of
     EUROTRA carries the promise that Europe will become the world
     leader in this field. To assume this leadership might be described
                           Final Report - Page 3                     ■ зг
 ---pagebreak---      as a moral obligation of Europe . Of the three highly aeve lopea
     regions in the world i.e. North America , Japan and Europe , the
     latter is the only one with a large variety of different national
     languages . It is this cultural heritage of Europe which makes it a
     natural task to lead the world in machine translation .
 4   Language is of an infinite variety . This implies basic limitations
     of a principle nature to the ultimo* achievements of macnine
     translation. We have to point out however that some of these
     limitations will also apply to translation by human beings .
     Accordingly the economic test for machine translation will not be
     its perfection in absolute terms but its relative quality as
     compared with human translation along with economic benefits .
5   The nature of tie present project might be described as applied
     research. A major weakness in the present plans is a lack of
    delineation betv»een the research phase and tne subsequent and
    necessarily overlapping development phase which is needed to derive
    a system to oe used in practice . The amount of coordination
    desirable during the research phase of a large and complex system
    is less than the amount of systems management needed to develop a
    system for practical use. The transition from the present phase to
    the next one will need a lot of thought and preparation.
6   The remarks just made seem to suggest the expectation of a
    straight-forward , though difficult transition from the present
    research project into the development phase. The Panel wants to
    stress , however , that at the present moment the progress of the
    work is insufficient to anticipate such a decision. As is so often
    the case in research , one can judge the quality of the effort
    undertaken - which is generally sufficient to quite gooo in the
    case of EUROTRA - but one cannot be sure whilst the work is in
    progress about the ultimate effectiveness of the results in
    economic terms .
 33                       Final Report - Page 4
 ---pagebreak---  2.  BISTORY
 7   The evaluation of the EUROTRA programme by a group of independent
     experts was suggested during the discussions in Council and the
     European Parliament on the proposal by the Commission to extena the
     EUROTRA programme to Spain and Portugal .
8    The report of the Committee on Energy , Research and Technology of
     the European Parliament considered that since the EUROTRA programme
     will take 7 years to complete , before the third phase is started ,
     the work already carried out should be assessed in the first half
     of 1987 by an inaependent committee of experts .
9    CGC-12 ( Management and Coordination Advisory Committee " Linguistic
     Problems") discussed the independent assessment in its ad-hoc Task
     Force during October-November 1986 . It was agreed that the
     assessment ought to be carriea out in spring/summer 1987 .
10   The composition of the - assessment panel was recommended to be
     optimally , two generalists ( for the policy , management ana
    organizations questions ) and two specialists . It was also
     suggested that one of the specialists should come from outside the
    community .
11  The Panel used the following definitions of EUROTRA Phases 1 , 2 ,
    and 3 , taken from the Council Decision :
    Phase 1 ( Preparatory phase ) - two years , 2 million ECO
    Setting up of the ACPM ; definition of methodology ; preparation of
    detailed programme ; definition of allocation of intellectual
    property rights and dissemination of results ; examination of the
    value of participation by third countries etc .
    Preparation of detailed specifications of linguistic models ,
    Eurotra software , lexical database ; preparation of Contracts of
    Association .
    Phase 2 (Phase of basic and applied linguistic research ) - two
    years , 8.5 million ECU
    1 . Basic linguistic research including the development of
    linguistic models for analysis and generation of each of the
    official Community languages ana for transfer between these
    languages. Based on a corpus and vocabulary in a limited field
    ( information technology from official Esprit documents ] estimated
    at around 2500 entries ; preparation of the lexical database , for
                         Final Report - Page 5
                                                                          ч
 ---pagebreak---   the above mentioned vocabulary , which will serve both for the
 analysis and for the generation of each of the languages and for
 the transfer between the languages ; a study of the linguistic
 strategies best suited to machine-execution of the various
 processes .
 2 . Construction of the basic software for Eurotra including issuing
 qf invitations to tender , selection of a body to construct the
 software ; development of the basic software including : the hign
 level language for describing the linguistic data and strategies ,
 the high level language for interaction between the user and the
 system ; the utility software for compiling the high level
 languages . This initial version of the software is intendea to
enable the development and machine testing of the linguistic models
defined by the participating centres when they are sufficiently
advanced . Its development is consequently a prerequisite for
validating the linguistic work under this programme . The
 industrial development of the Eurotra system , including adaptation
of the software to the performance and reliability requirements for
producing translations under commercial conditions , will not be put
in hand until this programme has been completed .
Phase 3 (Phase of stabilization of the linguistic models and
evaluation of results) - 18 months , 5.5 million ECU
After opinions have been received from ACPM , Crest , CIDST and Cetil
at the end of the second phase , i.e. when it is possible to carry
out systematic testing of the initial linguistic models , comprising
complete language pairs and consisting of analysis , transfer and
generation , the objective of the work will be concentrated on the
following aspects :
-       adapting the linguistic models , in oraer to proauce
        linguistic models which are as reliable as possible.   The
        mooels will then be fit for pre-operational use ,
-       progressively extending the basis of the text corpus , the
        linguistic models and the vocabulary for a specific field ,
        and on texts of increasing complexity ,
-       revising and progressively extending the lexical bases to
        cover the chosen field as exhaustively as possible (about
        20 000 entries in all the languages ),
-       evaluating the technical and economic performance of the
        system ,
                      Final Report - Page 6
 ---pagebreak---  -      preparing a proposal for the development of an operational
        system on an industrial scale and proceeding to the stage of
        commercial exploitation.
CGC-12 recommended a fairly broad approach to the assessment , and
 in particular suggested that the following points should be
studied :
- the results achieved ano the likeliness of reaching the objectives
of the second phase
- the quality of the scientific approach and especially the
suitability as a basis for the work of the third phase and later
 ( industrial development)
- the relationship of the approaches chosen for EUROTRA with the
general trends of advanced research in national language processing
- the impact of EUROTRA on machine translation ano natural language
processing research
- the setting of the priorities for machine translation and natural
language processing in national research policies and programmes
both in the Community ano in third countries (USA , Japan , Canada
etc .)
- the suitability of the organizational structure for the project
itself and as a model for other projects
- the suitability of placing the management of the project in the
administrative department of the Commission
- the management of the project .
Four assessment panel members were appointed , Dr A E Pannenborg
(Chairman) ano Mr A Danzin as generalists ano Professor Dr rer nat
H Steusloff and Professor Fil Dr S Alibi as experts . Mr H
Dieuzeide worked with Mr Danzin . Mrs H L Henoerson was appointed
as the Secretary , working with Mr P Vickers and Mrs L A Ferber .
                                                                     &
                      Final Report - Page 7
 ---pagebreak--- 14
14  In view of tne restricted timescale of the project , the panel
   decided that the first priority was to conduct interviews with each
   of the national research groups . After an initial meeting with
   members of the EUROTRA project team and staff members from DGXIII
    in Luxembourg , interviews were held witn all the national groups
   and members of the liaison group. Where possible the interviews
   were conducted by at least two members of the panel and one member
   of the secretariat. Most of these took place at the national
   research locations , others in Luxembourg .
15 Interviews were also carried out with members of CGC-12 , the Common
   Steering Committee and EUROTRA project staff . A representative of
   the European Parliament was also interviewed. On the basis of
   these interviews , aesk research and several plenary sessions , an
   interim report was prepared. In this report , the Assessment Panel
   described its observations and the opinions formed . This interim
   report was circulated to the Commission staff in DGXIII only.
16 In this final report , Chapters 1-5 contain a critical assessment
   of the present state of affairs . The panel have tried to
   understand the ultimate goal(s) of the project . Against this
   understanding they have assessed the validity of the present work ,
   its content , and the organizational framework surrounding it .
   Chapters 6 and 7 , contain conclusions reached by the Panel and
   recommendations for the future .
                        Final Report - Page 8
 ---pagebreak---  3 . GOALS
 Summary of goals
 17    The formal objectives of the EUROTRA programme , as expressed in the
       Council Decision of 4 November 1982 , are quite specific :
              ... the creation of a machine translation system of advanced
              design ( EUROTRA) capable of dealing with all official
              languages of the Community .
18     It has been recognized from the outset , however , that such a
       programme must include a large proportion of basic research , and
       that it would lead to benefits over and above the purely practical
       one of creating a new automatic translation system.
19     The Panel thus perceives the present goals of the programme as
       fourfola : •
             - political
             - scientific and technical
             - économie
             - éducation and training .
20     The political goal is primarily to develop a strong European
       competence in the field of machine translation , and the programme
       is evidently bearing fruit in this respect. A political constraint
       on the programme is the principle of equal status for all nine
       languages , which leads to certain anomalies in the level and Kind
       of benefit derived by different countries.
21     The scientific and technical goals are chiefly concerned with the
       basic linguistic research and the construction of the computer-
       based system. Progress towards these goals will be discussed in
       section 5. It is also required to prove that machine translation
      can be achieved with the EUROTRA linguistic principles.
22    The economic goal is to produce an advanced , useable , effective
      machine translation system , that will help to relieve the present
      heavy burden of Commission expenditure on translation services .
      Ultimately , as an " industrial " product , the system could be
      commercially profitable , but this was not originally spelled out as
      one of the goals .
                             Final Report - Page 9
 ---pagebreak---  23     It is not clear , for example , what degree of pre- or post-eoiting
       will be required with the final system. No target has been set for
       system performance in terms of speed of translation.     The wisaom of
       going for a batch system rather than an interactive one is
       questJionea by some of the research groups , but others strongly
       support the wisdom of a batch system.
The precise form of the end product does not appear to have been
 specified in any detail .
24    The eoucation and training goals are clearly related to the
      political one , and the programme has undoubtedly provided an
       important training ground for new specialists in the fielo . In the
      absence of experienced researchers in several countries , the groups
      have been built up with enthusiastic young graduates who are
      " learning on the job".
It has been noted that the research groups seem quite willing to accept
the political goals of the programme alongside the scientific ones .
25    At present , the scientific ( i.e. research) and economic ( i.e.
      development) goals of the project are being pursued side by side ,
      but these will become increasingly incompatible. It is difficult to
      predict at what point this situation will become intolerable , but
      certainly it cannot be ignored.
26    Another incompatibility within the project is between the need for
      flexibility , in order to obtain maximum value from research
      ( whatever it produces ) and the need to establish and achieve firm ,
      measurable goals .
27    Inevitably , there are differences in the interpretation of goals
      from one country to another , and different expectations as to the
      benefits to be derived . The German group for example , is intent on
      achieving a solution to match the original specification ; the Danes
      see the target as that of producing Detter translations than is
     possible with any other MT system . The Italian (Turin) group has a
      very pragmatic approach , aiming to achieve as much as possible in
      the time available . Others are inclined to take a wider
     perspective , and are more concerned with the progress achieved on
      the research side , that will yield greater rewards in the long
      term . The Greek group , for example , sees EUROTRA mainly as a
      research project , aimed at enhancing linguistic understanding of
      European languages .
                             Final Report   Page 10
 ---pagebreak---   EUROTRA Approach
  28    The approach adopted from the outset gave a greater emphasis to the
        linguistic research side than has been the case with other MT
        projects . This may be seen as a potential difficulty , given the
        fundamental importance of close cooperation between specialists in
        computer science and linguistics and in view of the shortage of
        specialists in computational linguistics mentioned below .
 29    The initial decision for a declarative system without the
       procedural possibilities of controlling the treatment of language
       specialities still causes efficiency problems. But the better
       Understandability of rules compared with procedural implementations
       supports this initial decision.
 Resources
 30    There is a shortage of qualified people with the necessary
       expertise for the project within the Community , and now that so
       many are engaged , there is competition with other employers who
       need to recruit staff in this field. This shortage applies not only
       with regard to linguistics , but also to computer science and , in
       particular , to computational linguistics , especially in Spain ,
       Portugal and Greece . Even where computer specialists are plentiful ,
       however , they are difficult to attract to a specialised project of
       this kind , especially where competitive salaries are not offered .
31    Quite apart from the inherent lack of suitably qualified people in
      the member states , the project has not always succeeded in
      attracting the most experienced staff . This has been partly due to
      the reluctance of personnel to commit themselves full-time to a
      project with such short-term security'of employment, exacerbated by
      the delays in getting the work started . It was said in Italy and
      Spain that some workers were reluctant to commit themselves fully
      to EUROTRA because its future was regarded as uncertain.
32    It has been noted that most of the staff presently employed are
      doing the work for its intellectual challenge rather than for its
      financial reward .
33    The majority of the present research groups are university-basea ,
      and as such are generally competent to undertake the research
      component of the programme. It is considered , however , that few of
      them are really qualified to undertake the development phase.
                            Final Report - Page 11                         Ho
 ---pagebreak---   34   During Phases 1 and 2 , linguistic research has taken priority over
       software development , and there has in general been a lack of
       software expertise .
  35   It was felt that the Luxembourg national group responsible for
       providing a documentation centre and clearing house for the project
       ( at IEGI ) showed keenness , but lacked the competence to perform
       these functions effectively .
 36    The terminology work of the Irish group has been criticized as
       insufficiently precise , and indeed still fights for recognition.
 The Panel considers that the central organisation and technical
 direction of the project have been seriously hampered by the long delays
 in providing staff for Mr Perschke 's unit . This factor merits criticism
 of those responsible . Concern is also felt regarding the lack of
qualifications , experience and training of some of the staff recently
appointed to the central unit .
Research vs Development
37    Though it is customary to speak of RiD as if research and
      development are more or less the same , this is certainly not the
      case .  The essence of research is that the outcome of the work is
      not predictable. Development of a product or a process as
      practised by industry is character ised by a full functional
      specification which is drawn up and agreed upon before the actual
      work starts . There is , of course , a grey zone in between research
      and development which generally is called applied research. In
      this case a goal is spelled out in general terms , but the oetails
      of how a possible solution should look are the very subject of the
      investigations carried out .
38   Research in computational linguistics is "heavy " research ,
      inevitably costly in terms of time and qualified personnel . It
     opens the way to the creation of " language industries " which would
     be concerned not only with automatic translation. These industries
     constitute an important branch of the information services which
     are so fundamental to the emerging new economy . These two factors
     lean to a philosophy on R & D policy which ne?ds to be considered
     from all angles .
                            Final Report - Page 12
 ---pagebreak---  Research in the humanities field is too often regarded as fairly
 undemanding in terms of human and financial resources , in
 comparison with research in the exact sciences , such as physics or
 biology . This idea is misleading , especially in the case of
 linguistics . The compilation of an electronic dictionary calls for
 the writing of hundreds of thousands of lines - a long , almost
 monastic task . Every word must be identified in all its different
 senses and syntactic forms . The production of a prototype
 dictionary can be carried out only by several competent specialists
 assisted by others whose work must be closely controlled. The study
 and articulation of all the syntactic rules is also an exacting
 task. The quality of the final result can only be assessed when a
 large volume of material has been processed . The development of the
 capability required calls for a stable long term policy ; nothing
 can be achieved in the short term , with limited means .
 To cross the critical threshold , it is necessary to have a
 concentration of resources (divided if desirable into decentralised
 teams but strictly coordinated). There needs to be an incentive for
a private sector initiative within Europe to undertake what is
required to establish the basis for a language industry. In the
absence of voluntary intervention , progress will be slow in
comparison with the developments which can be observed in North
America and in Japan , and results will stem mainly from exchanges
of accumulated knowledge between the most powerful centres , with
all the loss of freedom that that would entail .
The work for EUROTRA at present underway in Phase 2 can be termed
"applied research” . This is a direct consequence of the avenue
chosen as described in the section on EUROTRA approach , i.e. first
to strengthen the linguistic foundation through research before the
system ultimately to be realised will be specified. In view of the
fact that at present Machine Translation is to be aescribed as an
immature technology , this is a logical , though ambitious , way to
proceed .
Research , including applied research , should investigate various
options , evaluate these and select the best. This calls for a
certain flexibility in the guidance of the work and repeated
discussions on which direction to proceed in certain details. This
is reflected in the present mode of operation which we can describe
as coordination rather than systems management. - The coordinating
role is at present divided between central operations headed by Dr.
Perschke and the Liaison Group. -
                     Final Report - Page 13
 ---pagebreak---   43   Once the stage is reached where applied research comes to an end
       and the development of a practical machine translation system has
        to begin , the management mode will have to be changed.
       Coordination then will no longer be sufficient. In its stead ,
       systems management with full hierarchical power of direction will
       have to take its place .
 In view of this , the Panel does not agree with the original definition
 of Phase 3 , that is to wait until the end of phase 3 before starting
 development work .
 National vs European goals
 44    This has not been a problem in the majority of countries . In the
       UK , the EUROTRA work ana work on the Alvey programme has been
      complementary rather than conflicting . In Germany , the EUROTRA
      project has £>een successfully used as an argument to set up
      additional basic research activities in computational linguistics
      at the Universities of Berlin and Stuttgart.
45    In France , as in other countries , there have been difficulties in
      organising their contribution to the Community project , which
      inevitably draws away human resources that might otherwise be
      employed on national projects . Section B.3.5 gives the new
      organisation of the French National Group.
Potential for exploitation
46    Ideally , a programme of this magnitude should result in products
      with potential for exploitation outside the Commission ano the
      Community . It is considered , however , that although there coula be
      external demand for a system capable of handling a multiplicity of
      languages , there will be few customers ( if any ) for a system
     capable of translating between these particular 72 language pairs .
     The Commission is the only potential customer for a system with
      this capability . At the same time , it must be recognized that this
     wide spread of language coverage is a feature that puts EUROTRA in
     a class of its own alongside other MT systems.
Therefore if such a comprehensive system is to be realised then total
public funding is required.
47   There are many areas for exploitation which could come from the
     EUROTRA project . A ( non-exhaustive ) list is given below ;
                            Final Report - Page 14
 ---pagebreak--- Translation
    - assistance with translation of specialised technical text
       (commercial documents , maintenance manuals etc.);
    - assistance in the translation of keywords usea for scientific ,
       technical , administrative and legal information ;
    - assistance in the translation of abstracts of scientific and
      technical publications ;
   - automatic text translation using "controlled input systems "
       ( meteorology , pharmacology , public security , etc.);
General Language Industry
   - compilation of multilingual databases and databanks ;
   - multilingual standardisation of technical nomenclatures
      (aeronautics , nuclear , information technology etc.);
   - assistance in writing "controlled input text"; interactive pre¬
      editing
   - automatic study of foreign language texts in order to extract the
      essential meaning (scientific , industrial and military training );
   - assistance in the preparation of all kinds of dictionaries and
      specialised encyclopaedias ;
   - assistance in word processing , such as automatic correction of
      spelling errors ;
   - assistance in the teaching of both mother tongues and foreign
      languages ;
   - assistance to theoretical and practical studies in linguistics
      (study of ancient and modern languages );
                            Final Report - Page 15
 ---pagebreak---  Other areas
     - computer architecture - the EUROTRA project has brought to light,
        again the fact that there is room for a European project on the
        development, of new computer architectures for language processing ;
    - refinement of computer programming languages in order to bring them
        closer to natural languages ;
    - definition of new objectives for research in artificial
        intelligence
Other areas , not necessarily derived directly from EUROTRA
    - assistance with simple multilingual situations , using current
       expressions ( tourism , business travel etc.) - incluaing pocket-
       microcomputer translation systems , with or without synthetic
       speech ;
    - investigation of the authenticity or origin of texts etc.);
    - speech recognition and synthesis ( for the long term ) ;
    - aids for speech-hand icappea people
48     If an industrial product based on EUROTRA does emerge , there could
       be a substantial market for it . A recent report * by Dataquest
       predicts that by 1990 the world market for automated translation
       will be $500 million , as compared with $45 million in 1986 . On a
       positive note , the Spanish group spoke of the possibilities of
       fruitful contacts with other Spanish language projects ,
       particularly in the USA , Mexico and South America.
49     The Danish group see particular benefits in providing access for
       Danish industrialists to languages like Greek and Portuguese. They
       also envisage the use of EUROTRA in relevant government
       departments , such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs .
50    The Panel has noted that the Contracts of Association contain
       detailed provision regarding intellectual property rights relating
       to all information , inventions or improvements resulting from the
      programme .
* H.Uhler . Translation Systems . San José , Calif .: Dataquest Inc ., 19o6 .
                            Final Report - Page 16
 ---pagebreak---  Achievability
 Several of the research groups interviewed expressed confidence in their
 ability to meet the objectives of Phase 2 , and were optimistic about the
 outcome of the project as a whole . This attitude was strongest among the
 newer groups , and may well become diluted as the real problems are
 encountered . It has to be said that the Panel does not share this
 optimism entirely . There are several reasons for their doubts .
 51   One is the shortage of the necessary expertise in some of the
       member states . There was little or no tradition in computational
      linguistics , for example , in Spain and Greece . The effects of this
      shortage will become more evident as the project progresses ,
      especially with regard to the lexical work .
 52   Another is that the start of work has been delayed in a number of
      countries , such as Italy , Netherlands and Spain. These delays seem
      to have been largely due to bureaucratic causes rather than
      political ones . The situation has been aggravated by delays in
      making research funds available , although it is recognized that
      this has not been due to a lack of commitment to the project , but
      to difficulties of definition of national funding sources.
It is considered by the Panel that the majority of the goals of Phase 2
cannot be fully met within the original timescale for all of the
original 42 language pairs.
53    The Greek group faces particular problems in that little linguistic
      research has been done on modern Greek . There are no really
      authoritative dictionaries ana language analysis has not been
      performed so far .
54    The oegree of political backing at the national level has been
      variable. This backing has been strongest where an effective
      national EUROTRA "champion" has emerged from within the civil
      service or academe .
As mentioned in the section above , the Panel is seriously concerned with
the basic incompatibility of the research and development goals of the
project , in the context of its present overall organisation. This will
militate against the achievement of its objectives.
55   As noted in the section on resources , there have been and will
     continue to be problems in recruiting suitably qualified and
     experienced staff for the project , especially to meet the needs of
     Phase 3 .
                           Final Report - Page 17
                                                                          H
 ---pagebreak---  4 . ACHIEVEMENTS
General impression
56     Achievement of the fundamental objective of the project - a new
       machine translation system for the Community - is still a long way
       off , but the progress that has been made is substantial , especially
        if one takes into account the considerable difficulties of setting
       up and administering an international project on this scale .
57     A particular cause for congratulation is the degree of success
       achieved in setting up an effective basis for cooperation between
       so many research groups spread across the Community . The value of
       the experience gained in this aspect of the exercise is
       inestimable. Through this cooperation , networks of experts in
       linguistics and computational linguistics have been established
       that will be of long-term benefit.
58     There are also signs that the project is having many beneficial
       side effects , including the creation of a much greater awareness of
       the importance of research which helps to facilitate communication
       between different member countries of the Community. It has
       undoubtedly helped to encourage new directions in linguistic
       research .
59     The project is also having useful side effects with respect to
       education (see also paragraph 66 ). It was reported in Spain that
       EUROTRA was providing an impetus to the development of university
       and polytechnic courses , combining linguistics with informatics ana
       mathematics , thus providing competence in computational
       linguistics .
60    A serious obstacle to   progress has been the initial software
      provided for testing ,  which proved to be excessively slow in
      operation. (This will   be discussed further in section 5.) This
      problem is partly due    to the lack of suitably experienced staff ,
       ano to lack of direction from the centre .
Planning and control
61    The Panel is well aware of the difficulty of ensuring proper
      planning and control of research projects in general and in the MT
       field in particular , where it is hard to identify specific .
      milestones against which progress can be measured.
                            Final Report - Page 18
 ---pagebreak---  While recognizing the difficulty of establishing practical test criteria
 for the end of phase 2 , the Panel wishes to express its concern that
 this problem has not been resolved .
 62    It is vital to have a prototype for further evaluation of the
       linguistic model . A good prototype can provide feedback to
       research and be a tool to prove the practicability of a project .
 63   The degree to which control over the design of the system should be
       imposed from the centre was discussed in several interviews . In
       France and Italy there was agreement that different levels of
      control were needed for different aspects , e.g. :
              - for the interface , strong legislation ;
             - for syntactic aspects , " clever guidelines ";
             - for morphological aspects , total freedom .
 64   Progress achieved against targets in the participating countries is
      tabulated in Appendix A.
Quality of work
65    Technical aspects of the project will be discussed in section 5 ,
      but it can be said here that the Panel has gained a favourable
      impression of the quality of work carried out by the National
      Groups .
66    It was noted that some researchers are preparing theses based on
      their EUROTRA work , thus giving the project increased academic
      status . This development is to be welcomed for the future health of
      the project , and shows a high level of motivation of the
      researchers .
67    It is also apparent that project participation is being put to gooa
     effect by workers undertaking other work outside the scope of
     EUROTRA. The DIMA group in Turin and the IAI at Saarbruecken are
     cases in point , as well as the Group in Leuven.
Industrial involvement
Given the route chosen for EUROTRA, the non-involvement of industry so
far is logical . The Panel feels , however? that it is desirable to
prepare now for industrial involvement at short notice ,__ for instance
well before the prototype at the end of Phase 2 .
                           Final Report - Page 19 .                      n
 ---pagebreak--- 68 This does not preclude the possioility of indepenoent parallel
   research , if necessary unrelated to the industrial involvement .
69 The Spanish group have experienced difficulties in attracting
   industrial support or interest , despite strong Government support ,
   because commercial companies all perceive EUROTRA as being nearer
   to the research stage than the development stage.
70 A meeting was held with a' group of five French industrialists from
   firms with an interest in language processing , from which it
   appeared that they had reservations about the worth of EUROTRA in
   its present form. The target of a 20000-word vocabulary was
   regarded as unrealistic ; the target should be 100,000 words for a
   system to be used in practice . It was also felt that the aims of
   EUROTRA should be more clearly defined .
                        Final Report - Page 20
 ---pagebreak---   5.   ORGANISATIONAL i FINANCIAL
 Advisory and Management Committees
 71    Within the EUROTRA project there are different levels of advisory
       and management committees . The attached chart shows part of the
       management structure . CGC-12 is the Advisory Committee which has
      overall responsibility for linguistics including the EUROTRA
      project , and which reports to the Member States . The Common
      Steering Committee administers the Contracts of Association on
      behalf of the Member States and since its inception at the
      beginning of Phase 2 , it has been effective in ensuring that
      adequate resources are given to the Project . These had been
      allocated but bureaucratic procedures had prevented them from being
      exploited by the Project Groups .
 72   The Liaison Group is made up of the Research Group Leaders and is
      the main forum for the management of research . The main criticism
      has been that the liaison group works in too much detail . Some
      National Groups feel that it spends too much time on the minutiae
      of administration , others feel that technical details which have
      already been discussed in sub-groups are continually re-discussed .
73    There is a feeling that there is not enough long-term planning in
      tne project . The Liaison Group only plans three months ahead .
      This can be blamed partly on the short-term nature of the EUROTRA
     contracts .
74   Some National Groups are worried about the continual pressure to
      implement. A research project , apart from the mainstream of the
     work , is now being carried out by two National Groups , but this is
     not really approved of by the Central Operations .
The Liaison Group works surprisingly well considering the number of
disparate scientific opinions represented . It is unlikely that a
development project of any size could be managed this way , but this
Community research project does appear to be going ahead well using such
an unorthodox method .
                          Final Report - Page 21
 ---pagebreak---   Central Operations
  75    Tnere are currently only two machine translation professionals
        employed by DGXIII . In addition the sudden withdrawal of the ISSCO
        team has exacerbated the situation . Since 1985 the Central
        Operations have been attempting to build up their resources , but
        the Commission have been reluctant to allow any outside
        recruitment. Instead translators have been seconded from DGIX ,
       most of whom have no experience in computational linguistics .    The
       main purpose of these translators is to liaise directly with the
       National Groups and to help them with co-ordination and
       administration.    The translators do not have enough knowledge or
       expertise to help the National Groups , and particularly to help the
       " late-starters " to catch up.   In addition the travel budget does
       not appear to allow much resources for the translators to actually
       visit the Groups with whom they liaise .
 76    There is a disparity of view between the National Groups over the
       amount of central scientific direction the project requires .
       Scientifically advanced groups feel that they do not require
       direction , while those who are trying to catch up , feel greater
       need for direction . Many groups feel that Sergei Perschke has been
       trying to carry out the four main functions of administration ,
      planning , political aspects and scientific direction , without any
      assistance from the Commission.
77    This bears out an original criticism of the project , which is the
       inclusion of the project as an integral part of an administrative
      aepartment . An existing civil servant has been placed in an
      existing hierarchy as a project manager . Normally there would be a
      "project officer " with outside administrative responsibility and a
      " project manager " with day to day responsibility . When the
      comparatively independent agency ISSCO were maintaining the
      secretariat and administrative functions the responsibilities were
      better separated . In the existing management the roles are
      confused which does not lead to effective management.
78    There is general dissatisfaction with the slowness of the current
      software .   There have been several versions , which are documented
      in Appendix C , but several groups feel that they are being held
      back by the slowness of the current version.
79    The main technical input to EUROTRA has come from sub-groups of
      people working part-time with National Groups or working full-time
      for central operations while located in National Groups . These
      groups appear to have worked well in the past , coordinated by ISSCO
      personnel .
                             Final Report - Page 22
 ---pagebreak---  80    From the end of April 1987 , the contract with 1SSCO to provide
       technical support and co-ordination ceased. This appeared to leave
       a vacuum in Central Operations which the seconded translators have
       not been able to fill .  Administrative staff have been recruited to
       cover certain functions , but the software and co-ordination aspects
       are being hampered by the lack of expertise.
 The Panel is of the opinion that the key role played by ISSCO has so
 far not been taken over in any sufficient way by the central staff.
 81   The initiative of the EUROTRA Central Institute by the German
      delegation to CGC-12 was noted. In view of the fact that so far
      almost all attempts to set up " European Research Institutes " have
      failed , the Panel does not deplore the rejection of the paper by
      CGC-12 .
National Groups
82    The individual National Groups are structured and financed in a
      variety of ways. Appendix B gives more details. The money paid to
      the National Groups by the Commission varies from 25% in the case
      of Germany and France , to 85% in the case of Luxembourg. There
      appears to be a link between the proportion of the budget paid by
      the Commission and the amount of Central Operations authority
      recognised by the National Group. The German and Italian groups are
      independent institutes , all the rest are based in university
      departments of languages , linguistics or .computational linguistics .
83    There have been several causes of delay in starting work in
      national groups . In some cases the signature of the Contract of
      Association was delayed by government departments , in others the
      Contract was signed , but the money from the Commission took over
      six months to reach the National Group. In most cases the national
      funding body provides interim funding while the Commission money is
      being processed through the bureaucracies. In terms of cash flow
      the double source funding has been an advantage . However , there are
      some conflicts .
84    In some cases there may be a crisis coming up between national ano
     CEC funding as the CEC funding , once received , may be carried over
      from one financial period to another , but national funding may not .
     Delays in the project have caused substantial underspending by
     National Groups and it is possible -that project money may be lost .
                           Final Report - Page 23
 ---pagebreak---  85   There are differing staffing policies between National Groups.
      Some groups have a policy of mainly full-time staff , whereas others
     have all part-time research staff with part-time teaching posts.
     The costs of staff in each country are not taken into account in
     the overall project funding . 'This means that where salaries are
      lower , in the UK for example , they are able to afford more project
     staff .
Communication between individual National Groups is generally good.     The
groups tend to communicate better with other groups having a commonality
of style of language school and with similar linguistic traditions.
86   In the United Kingdom , France , Germany , Greece and Italy , the
     EUROTRA work has been spread between more than one research unit .
     In some countries there is a division of tasks between the groups ,
     in others specific pieces of work are sub-contracteo to the other
     research unit. Some units are under central political pressure to
     share the work with other units in their country .    Only in France
     and Greece does this division of work give rise to a lack of co¬
     ordination .
53                         Final Report - Page 24
 ---pagebreak---   6.    SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL
  Reference Manual
  87    Reference Manuals are produced by specialist technical sub-groups .
        These are intended to give the Eurotrian an idea of the actual
        state of the project and to provide a common basis for discussion ,
        research and planning . Some National Groups regard the manual as a
        form of "legislation", while others regard it purely as a
       discussion document .
 It would therefore appear that the Reference Manual is . trying to carry
 out both the functions of a standards or specification document as well
 as being a method of communicating the latest ideas for discussion and
 comment.    It is hot apparent from the manual which parts are intended for
 which function.
 Linguistic Aspects
 88    The linguistic approach must be looked at in the light of the dual
       goal of the project : to further research and to develop a prototype
       system. On the one hand , the identification of fundamental
      problems , considerations about theory and method , the careful
       choice of data , provision for experimentation , a long term
      perspective , etc. are essential . On the other hano , early
      decisions on methodological legislation , linguistic shortcuts ,
      compromises , a short term perspective , etc., are brought to the
       fore. This situation leads inevitably to pragmatic solutions .
89    The simple overall structure chosen - analysis , transfer ,
      generation - is well known in the field . In the given situation ,
      the choice of linguistic models is also reasonable. To the extent
      to which it is specified it makes use of ideas from , for example ,
      stratif icational grammar , dependency grammar , and case grammar .
      The project is aware of the fact that a number of notorious
      problems can only partly or not at all be solved with these (or in
      some cases any other ) means . Cases in point are , for example ,
      anaphoric pronouns , definiteness in nouns , modality in verbs ,
      correct but intricate structures of various types , ungrammatical
      sentences ( which crop up over and over again), etc.
90    The interface structure , which is the representation of the
      semantic content of the text , is based on the previous levels of
      analysis of the utterance to be translated . This means it is
      language-dependent to a certain extent. A more abstract
      representation would have been preferable. Considering the state
                            Final Report - Page 25
 ---pagebreak---  of affairs , offering only fragments of such a type of description ,
 there is little ground for criticism on this point . The
 specification of semantic features and semantic relations necessary
 for establishing the interface structure , however , will require a
 considerable additional effort .
 The dictionary in a wide sense of the word - listing words and
 collocations and their meanings and combinatorial properties - is
 crucial in a machine translation system , as well as in most systems
 for natural-language processing . The amount of work required for
 establishing this component has most certainly been underestimated
 in the project . Generally speaking , there are good or fairly good
 printed monolingual dictionaries of the languages concerned , but
 making them into machine dictionaries is a great effort . Wnat is
 needed is not just an electronic version of the book in question
 but a component character ized by additional information and much
 more specificity , shrouded in the formalism agreed upon.
The two numbers of dictionary entries prescribed for the prototype
system ( 2,500 and 20,000 ) are somewhat arbitrary , related to the
arbitrary size of the corpus and to the SYSTRAN experience . The
figures also mean different things if they refer to French or
German or Italian , etc. Irrespective of this , 20,000 is too much
for a prototype system , but far too little for a real system .
The lack of bilingual dictionaries in a great number of cases is a
drawback . It will have to be compensated for by a lot of dedicated
work . Historically speaking all the nine languages are dialects of
the same Indo-European protolanguage , which ought to be helpful ,
even if the languages have developed along varying lines ( mainly
Germanic or Romance). Anyhow , the important contrastive aspect
oeserves much more attention .
It is well-known that the content of a sentence cannot be
exhaustively and unambiguously calculated from the string of
letters . A really powerful system has to make use of a wider
context ( sometimes much wider ) and a big knowledge base of great
complexity in addition to the large and very detailed dictionary .
Even so it is improper to talk about language understanding in a
computational environment. At best some kind of decoding can oe
obtained . However , this is an extremely important eno and the way
of arriving there is very illuminating .
In view of the fact that a fully automatic high-quality translation
is not within reach , additional steps will have to be taken. The
most obvious step is to induce postediting . This is widely agreed
upon among those active in the project and it is to be looked upon
                      Final Report - Page 26
 ---pagebreak---         as quite natural .   However , there are also suggestions concerning
        the source text.    The idea put forward is to impose restriction on
     - those writing the documents to be translated .      But this can have
        ominous ramifications for the language , the language users , and
        their culture . Thus it should only be used on a short-term basis
        as a provisional solution.
 96  . The Council decision of 4 November 1982 is on a research and
        development programme for "a machine translation system of advanced
        design". It is evident that the design of a system can be advanced
       - which is fundamental for research - even if its lingual output
       doesn't meet the highest standards of quality .
 System Architecture and Software
 97    The Virtual MT - Machine is the current concept and basis for the
       EUROTRA system architecture and tools . As pointed out in more
       detail in Appendix C.3 , the MT-system , expected to be the result of
       Phase 2 , is based on the - " Framework Engineering " report as issued
       by the system development group of Central Operations , Luxembourg .
       This approach emphasises the application of a sequence of
       transformations to the ’text under translation , this sequence,
       consisting of an alteration , of representations and translators .
98     This general scheme of a state- transition-machine as the underlying
       mechanism of the EUROTRA MT-machine is certainly an appropriate
       approach which must then be filled in by correspondingly general
       transformation tools and representation schemata. The definition
       of such components is the purpose of the " Framework Engineering "
       ( FE ) report.
99     This methodological approach is more systematic than the former
       ones which applied translators , generators and dictionaries of
      different kinds and as different components , as is the case in the
      current EUROTRA software 1.2 .     FE has elements of an artificial
       intelligence solution to MT and is by this reason a promising start
       to future MT systems being able to resolve complex semantic
       translation problems.
100   Due to the required fast availability of prototyped MT systems for
      the test of dictionary work , interface definitions and translators ,
      this systematic approach was not taken in the currently available
      EUROTRA software 1.2. Discussions w-ith Central Operations ,
      Luxembourg , showed that the design conflicts between fast
      availability of prototyped systems ana more systematic concepts are
      well considered .    At the same time it is clear that lack of
                              Final Report - Page 27                          %
 ---pagebreak---         experienced computer scientists in the development of the currei.t
        software system is another reason for the low efficiency of the
        version 1.2 software .
  101 The trade-off in the development of the current prototype software
        is efficiency versus flexibility and fast prototyping . Since the
        MT components like dictionaries , representations and transformers
        are still research items , flexibility for an easy change of , for
       example , dictionary entries and rules is essential . Highest
        flexibility can be obtained through interpretive systems which tend
       to be of low efficiency . Efficiency is required not to inhibit the
       progress of testing new linguistic concepts and components . As a
       third aspect , fast prototyping requires tne application of as many
       existing tools as possible.
 102   The currently existing EUROTRA software version 1.2 , using PROLOG
       on a microVAX , fulfills the criteria of using available software
       tools and of a  certain flexibility due to the properties of PROLOG .
       The efficiency  of the interpretive PROLOG system is low . The
       application of  the FE methods in version 3.1 of the EUROTRA
       software must be used to improve efficiency and maintaining or even
       increasing flexibility . At the same time computer science experts
      must be brought in to improve the architecture of the EUROTRA
      system in hardware and software.     Industrial system quality aspects
      must be introduced to improve the reusability of Phase 2 software
      for further project work and CEC applications.
103 According to current plans , flexibility will be maintained through
      the use of a data base . Efficiency will be increased through
      faster computers and the direct interpretation of transformation
      rules by an interpreter , implemented in the programming language C.
      In the medium term , investigations of possible parallelisms in rule
      treatment ought to produce results . Portability will be maintained
      by the use of UNIX and the language C. Recent experiments with the
      UNIX subset as defined in XOPEN have been encouraging .
104  The ergonomics and thereby efficiency of the language groups work
     could be increased through better usage of tne multi-tasking
     facilities of UNIX ; dialog-intensive development work can be
     performed in the foreground whereas test of grammars ana rules , or
     the compilation of dictionaries can be background jobs. This
     requires high performance development machines for the EUROTRA
     teams which , under the general requirements of higher working
     efficiency in EUROTRA , shoula be equipped with modern
     workstations .
                           Final Report - Page 28
 ---pagebreak--- The initial decision for a declarative system in EUROTRA imposes certain
operational requirements on the EUROTRA hardware and software
architecture. At present , the inappropriate choice of software
implementation methods and a hardware with low performance , compared to
the current state of computer performance/price ratios and the
corresponding future expectations , cause performance problems of
software version 1.2. The better understandability of rules compared
with the procedural implementations of MT systems , together with
improved implementation and hardware capabilities , will support this
initial decision , as carried on in Framework Engineering .
                         Final Report - Page 29                          5?
 ---pagebreak---  7     CONCLUSIONS
 Ccale of Project
 105   Machine translation is carried out by a system . The architecture of
       systems generally evolves in small steps (mainly through improved
       sub-systems) ana occasionally by a radical change of concepts. The
       latter is risky . Accordingly the new concepts should be tested on
       as small a scale as possible.
 106   EUROTRA has chosen to base itself on a larger volume of funoamental
      research than any existing translation system. In order to test the
      validity of the outcome of research , one would normally prefer to
      test it on as small a scale as possible. The political decision
      that was made for EUROTRA has overridden this approach and required
      the project to proceed with research and implementation of the nine
      languages in parallel . The magnitude of the risk involved has thus
      been greatly increased , while reducing the likely achievability of
      a practical translation system.
107   EUROTRA at present is based on the assumption that all CEC
      translation work will be done centrally. The Panel query this
     assumption, and would expect some translation be done in a
     decentralised manner within member states .
108  It is apparent that this type of project would never have been
     unaertaken as a commercial research proposition and could only be
     undertaken with full public funding.
EUROTRA Principles
109  Fundamental progress has to be maoe in several critical areas : the
     level of abstraction to be used in the processing of source
     languages , interfaces between one language and another ,
     understanding of context , computer techniques. Development will emerge
     from the deeper knowledge , inevitably enriched by a high degree of
     empiricism , that will be derived from fundamental linguistics , from
     the science and architecture of information processing systems
     ( textual , non-mathematical) and to a certain extent from artificial
     intelligence .
                           Final Report - Page 30
 ---pagebreak---  110 Although most of the participating national teams are university
       based , some of the teams have a more independent status , with a
       stronger practical orientation. It is to be noted that the latter
       group has not turned away from the EUROTRA approach despite its
       language research orientation. This implies that experts with a
       stronger link to practice than the average university scientists
       also believe in the ultimate utility of the EUROTRA project .
 Reference Manual
 111  The reference manual has been trying to fulfill two roles , namely
       those of standards and of regulation , as well as serving as a
       methoa of communication between research groups . This has caused a
      certain amount of confusion as the two roles have not been
       sufficiently obvious within the text of the manuals .
Management
112   The central organisation and direction of the project have been
      hampered by long delays in provision of staff and resources.
      Although the liaison group appears to work well at this stage , a
      greater central management burden than necessary has been put upon
      them because of the lack of central resources . As a mechanism for
      running a distributed research project it has been effective , but
      is not seen as an effective way of managing any future development
      project .
113   The executive and principal roles have not been sufficiently
      distinguished within the project. The project appears as an
      integral part of an administrative department of the Commission ,
      which is not an effective project management scenario.
114   There has been no attempt to establish practical test criteria for
      the end of Phase 2 of the project . This would appear to be partly
     due to the lack of sufficient central expertise to evaluate and
      integrate the results of the various research components . One of
      the criteria has to be based on a comparison with human
      translation .
                           Final Report - Page 31
 ---pagebreak---  115   In such a costly and ambitious project the results of*the work must
      be demonstrated in the fora of applications , or the stages of
      progress should be marked with practical results. This is why it is
      so desirable that there should be a permanent association between
      the research and the canoidate organisations for the creation of a
      language Industry. Only industrial firms can identify commercially
      exploitable objectives that are compatible with the state of the
      art .
 116  The areas of application for computational linguistics are very
      numerous and a (non-exhaustive ) list is given in Chapter 3 .
Finance
117   There have been problems with the lack of central financial
      resources. This has meant that the central personnel have not had
      the budgets necessary for close liaison with some of the national
     groups .
118  For many reasons , and in many cases the Commission funding has
     taken an excessively long time to reach the national groups. In
     some cases national funding has been available to fill in the gap.
     In others this has caused unacceptable delays in the project.
Language Rules
119  The choice of a declarative method for encoding the rules of
     language seems plausible but is unproven in its efficacy. The
     plausibility rests on two arguments. The first one , which seems to
     have guided the choice , rests on the better opportunities for
     modularity and also on more easy cooroination between various
     languages. The second argument is derived from increased attention
     to declarative languages in computer technology in general .
                          Final Report - Page 32
 ---pagebreak---  Systea Design
 120   Machine translation deals with languages . In the light of the
       nature of the project, it is therefore not illogical to direct the
       major research efforts at language analyses and syntheses . The more
       mechanical work of translation has to be carried out by computers .
       These have enormous capabilities of speed in data handling , but
       also have their limits. It would be logical for more account to be
       taken of the possibilities of computer hardware and software. The
      present almost exclusive emphasis on the linguistic side of the
       system prevents this desirable interaction and again increases the
       risk of not achieving the ultimate goal of a practical system.
 121  The project philosophy ignores of any potential interaction between
       the translator and the system. The Panel questions the wisdom of
      this approach. In view of the many Developments in computer
      software which have been advancing mechanisms and sophistication of
      pre-editing , some cautious steps in this oirection could be
      considered .
122   It would also be reasonable to include some element of post¬
      editing , which has been widely agreed on among those active in the
      project and is to be looked upon as quite natural .
Computer Systems
123   The software bottleneck of EUROTRA seems to be one of the most pressing
      problems needing a solution. It seems likely that a solution will
      only be found within an acceptable timescale if appreciable talent
      in the field of software architecture and engineering is contracted
      at short notice from thiro parties .
124   If the software cannot be improved , there is a possiDility that
     neither the grammar nor the dictionaries can be appropriately
      tested at the end of Phase 2 .
125  The hardware and architecture requirements for overall system
     design are also causing a bottleneck , this will become worse as the
     software is improved .
                           Final Report - Page 33
 ---pagebreak---  Dictionary Development
 126   In the development of practical translation systems and their
       subsequent continual updating , the bulk of the work and the cost
      comes from composing and extending the dictionaries . Accordingly it
       is customary to make use , as much as possible , of existing
      electronic dictionaries .
 127  The EUROTRA approach leads to the compilation of dictionaries which
      are not directly compatible with existing ones . Only when the
      ultimate results have been proven to be vastly superior to anything
      else will this justify the appreciable additional cost.
128   Insufficient forward planning seems to exist in the present EUROTRA
      structure with regard to the task of compiling the dictionaries . It
      is clear to the Panel that to a certain extent this work requires a
      different kind of people and a different kind of organisation than
      is needed for the applied research on the rules of language .
129   In addition it would appear that the resources required for
      dictionary compilation work have been seriously underestimated in
      the project .
Promotion
130  The EUROTRA project has certainly achieved its goal of promoting
     computational linguistics in the member states . It has increased
     awareness of the subject in general and has encouraged work on
      those languages which are less well developed in the field of
     linguistic research.
Importance of Project
131 The complexity of t_ne problem of automatic language translation has
     only been realised gradually during the course of the project by
     the authorities . Tbe linguists look at the project as a real
     challenge .
132 A research and development team represents a high level of
     expertise. If funding is interrupted , there will be no knowledge
     tran;.f er from phase 2 to Phase 3 and the primary goals will
     definitely not be reached.
                           Final Report - Page 34
 ---pagebreak--- Suma ry
133  It is impossible to judge at t-his stage whether the project has
     fulfilled all its goals . The general conclusion of the Panel is
     that EUROTRA has so far fulfilled its political , education and
     training goals , and has partly achieved its scientific and
     technical goals . The economic goals do not appear to have been
    considered at this stage . The Panel 's recommendations aim to
    rectify this situation.
                         Final Report - Page 35
                                                                      C4
 ---pagebreak---  8.    RECOMMENDATIONS
 134 There are three parts to the recommendations which may be
       considered as separate entities :
 I    THE FLTTJRE OF EURDTRA
 135 The importance of the project to the European Community as a whole
      has to be emphasised as well as its enormous cost saving potential .
       It has implications for all the Community Institutions - the
      Council , European Parliament , European Court , European Patent
      office , as well as cultural implications. Raving instigated such a
      project and mobilised the expertise , it would be a retrograde step
      for the Commission to abandon it .
 136 The funding for the project should not be interrupted , in the
      Panel 's opinion , in particular some national groups should not be
      made to wait for others . Of necessity there will be a staggered
      development from research to development. The transfer from Phase
      2 to 3 is already staggered in time for various participants , this
      is borne out by the Contracts of Association (see Appendix A).
137  There should be more realistic deadlines for Phase 2 , and a
     modified basis for Phase 3. The suggested deadline for completion
     of Phase 2 for all participants is the end of 1988 .
138  Work on the implementation of language pairs should not be stopped
     because other pairs need to "catch-up".
Organisations ! Fora
139  The management organisation of the project should be reviewed
     immediately for the remainder of Phase 2. The central management in
     particular should have a specific review of resources required . For
     Phase 3 a detailed management plan is required. This should be
     looked at in the near future , because of the necessary adaptation
     required to cope with the involvement of third parties .    This also
     applies to the recommendations in III .
140  The Panel opinion is that the essence of Phase 3 , as described in
     section 2 , should be that the research and development work be
     separated , and that development should be transferred to an
     industrial footing . EUROTRA should then proceed on two parallel
     tracks , each with its own clear sets of objectives :
                            Final Report - Page 36
 ---pagebreak---       (1 ) , research on linguistic aspects , building on the progress
      achieved in Phase 2 ;
      ( 2 ) development of practical applications of the results of
      research , leading towards the production of a fully operational
      automatic translation system.
 141  The following Figure gives a summary of the two parallel tracks .
                                 RESEARCH            DEVELOPMENT
Phase 2
end 1988 +
Phase 3
            т            other
         time         applications                   EUROTRA
                            Final Report - Page 37
 ---pagebreak---  II'   RESEARCH
 Content
 142   It is evident that research in computational linguistics should
      continue for a long time to come. Research in this area is
       important for the creation of " language industries " related to
       information services , which the panel sees as fundamental to the
      emerging new economy.
 143  With regard to the present EUROTRA programme , in the linguistic
      research more attention should be paid to the following areas :
      the crucial dictionary component of the system ; the contrastive
      aspects of language translation , since only a minority of the 72
      pairs of languages have been studied from this point of view
      earlier ; and the semantic problems involved ( semantic features and
      relations), which are very important for the interface structure ,
      require a great additional effort.
144   There should also be more attention paid to : standard computer
     architecture issues , better use of the capabilities of the existing
     architecture , and better use of existing software tools.
145  There is a need for stimulation of research into advanced computer
     architectures , in particular parallel and associative
     architectures . These could have major implications upon the future
     language inoustry .
146  The Panel recommends that CGC12 concerns itself with the way in
     which research , academic or precompetitive , could be carried out in
     parallel with EUROTRA. Stimulus would be provided by having , in
     mutual competition , a small number of European teams of workers
     with similar ideas , working in parallel with mainstream Phase 3
     development. These teams would be constituted preferably by
     association between universities and industrial firms . RID
     proposals could address either clearly defined practical problems
     or more fundamental questions . Additional research funding could
     be available from projects such as ESPRIT, or from the Framework
     Programme .
                           Final Report - Page 38
4
 ---pagebreak---   Ill  DEVELOPMENT
 147   The Panel is of the opinion that the original definition of the
       Phases of EUROTRA are not realistic. This applies especially to
       the transition from the present mode of operation to industrial
       development , which is a process spread out over time. The Panel
       believes that the suggested involvement of inaustry only after the
       end of Phase 3 does not fulfill the essential goal of EUROTRA.
 148   The EUROTRA programme could result in products with potential for
       exploitation outside the Commission and the Community. However ,
       this type of project would never have been undertaken as commercial
       research , and the Community institutions are likely to be tbe only
       customers for a system with these particular 72 language pairs . It
       must be recognised , however * that it is the wide spread of language
       coverage which puts EUROTRA . in a class of its own alongside other MT
       systems . Therefore if such a comprehensive system is to be
       realised then total public funding is required .
 149   The amount of money needed for the development of a practical
       system for use by the Community Institutions by an ( in essence)
       industrial Consortium cannot be estimated at the present time .    It
       is certain , however , that the funas for EUROTRA , committed ana
      earmarked now, will not be sufficient for that purpose. If an
      attempt was maae to squeeze this development project into tne
      present budgets , it would have a doubly negative consequence . It
      would kill the continuation of the research effort , and would lead
      to a very imperfect system , which could not be expected to improve
      on alternative , existing systems in performance .
150   The Panel recommends that a third party is commissioned to carry
      out a study about the definition and cost of the development of a
      practical EUROTRA system , based on the present and shortly expected
      research results .
Organisation
151   As stated above , further discussion and study is needed on possible
      realistic targets for a development project for the machine
      translation system . How advanced a system should it be ? For what
      customers ? As with all products , the more limited the objectives ,
      the better the chances of success .
                                 »
                             Final Report - Page 39
 ---pagebreak---   152 The Commission should pay more attention to the organisational ,
        requirements needed to execute the next phase, for example the work of
        dictionary compilation. In the Panel 's opinion, most of the present
       groups do not have adequate resources to cope with large-scale
       dictionary work.
 153   Before the end of Phase 2 , private enterprise should be involved ,
       both to help in the achievement of targets and definition of the
       final product. Specific areas requiring external input are (a )
       dictionary compilation work , and (b) specifying software needed for
       Phase 3 .
 Planning and Execution •
 154 The Commission should ensure that steps are taken to bring about
       the formation of a (multinational ) industrial consortium to take on
       the development work suggested above . Early involvement of
       industrial organisations during Phase 2 will facilitate the
       formation of the consortium.
155   More thought is needed on how such a consortium woula interact with
      the EUROTRA organisation; participants would have to consult with
      EUROTRA research groups to evaluate the applicability of their
      research results. There is no need to postpone this consultation
      until Phase 3. The expertise of the existing National Groups
      should be used in the preparation work for the development phase .
      Several of the Groups are alreaoy concerned with external contract
      work .
156   It is suggested that proposals for Phase 3 research projects should
      be invited from the present research groups. Some of these might
      be in conjunction with industrial partners
157  The work of the industrial consortium should be backed-up by the
     activities of Central Operations (performeo for instance by the
     IEGI as the Luxembourg National Group) in testing , maintenance and
     distribution of the EUROTRA product on behalf of the European
     Commission .
                           Final Report - Page 40
 ---pagebreak---  APPENDIX A - PROGRESS ACHIEVED AGAINST TARGETS (as of 31 July 1987 )
 158   The figure shows the contract signature and start dates for the
       national project Groups.' Progress in relation to planned timetable
       is outlined below .
 159  BELGIUM
      Dutch language work - Late start because of problems with
      Netherlands bureaucracy , but claim to have caught up well.
      French language work - Also late starting . University of Liege
      concentrating on lexicographic aspects .
160   DENMARK
      One of the earlier Groups to start , with good support and funding
      they are well on schedule.
161   GERMANY
      Confident of meeting project deadlines . Well on schedule .
162   GREECE
      Started late because of delays caused by Greek government , and also
      held up by lack of computer . Suffers disadvantage that Greek
      language has not been investigated in terms of modern linguistics ,
      and appropriate dictionaries are lacking. Situation now regarded as
      stable . Computer due by end of June 1987 , and research Groups
      should be complete by October 1987 . Professor Koutsoudas hopes that
      they can catch up with the timetable by October 1987 , and then keep
      to schedule in most areas.
163  FRANCE
     Work was late starting here for three reasons :
             ( 1 ) Late availability of resources ;
             (2 ) Lack of commitment to the project by some researchers ,
             who feel that at the technical level the project leaves
            something to be oesired ;
             (3 ) Disagreements between the two main Groups (Nancy and
            Paris ) .
                             Final Report - Page 41                        7b
 ---pagebreak---       French participation has now been substantially reorganised , and
      Mme Danlos expresses confidence that useful results will be
      achieved.  Division of work between National Groups is also
      discussed in B.3.S.
 164  IRELAND
      Problems experienced because of shortage of available expertise .
      Other Groups are doubtful of value of this component and are not
      fully supportive.
 165  ITALY
      Contract of association signed only in January 1987 , largely due to
      bureaucratic delays . Deadline for completion of analysis work is
     September 1987. Approach is to do as much as possible in time
     available , rather than aim for perfection.
166  LUXEMBOURG
     Late starting due to shortage of expertise and lack of research
     environment .
167  NETHERLANDS
     Late setting up because of problems between Dutch ministries .
     Existing expertise in EUROTRA is helping them to catch up quickly .
168  PORTUGAL
     With Spain , a late entrant to the project. Their EUROTRA contract
     was signed only in March 1987 . They do not foresee problems with
     personnel resources , however , and their two-year programme should
     enable them to catch up with other National Groups . They hope to
     finish their first-cycle analysis by February 1988 . (The 1986
     EUROTRA Annual Report makes it clear , however , that Portugal and
     Spain will finish Phase 2 one year after the other countries .)
169. SPAIN
     The Spanish Group have only just received their funds , and their
     computer has been held up by import problems . They feel that they
     should be able to implement their original programme by the eno of
     1989 .
                           Final Report - Page 42
 ---pagebreak--- 170   UNITED KINGDOM
     On schedule for analysis work , but held up on computer system
      testing because of slowness of software . Expect to be able to meet
     deadlines .
OFFICIAL POSITION
171  The EUROTRA Fourth Annual Report ( 1986 ) includes the following
     significant admissions , in paragraphs 33-35 :
     "At the end of 1986 the situation of the national teams at face
     value , appeared to be quite satisfactory : eleven contracts signed ,
     and the twelfth ready for signature . But the actual implementation
     of the contracts shows a somewhat different picture .
172  The programme of work of the national teams foresaw the conclusion
     of the first cycle of implementation by the end of January 1987 . By
     the end of 1986 it became evident that only three of the Groups :
     DK , D and UK would complete the programme on time .
     - Italy had not started yet
     - Holland had just started , and together with their Belgian partner
     one could expect partial monolingual analysis and synthesis
     results , but not transfer components
     - France and Greece would present only partial monolingual analysis
     ano/or synthesis components .
     The delays in France ano Greece are cue mainly to internal
     organization problems and to the lack of computers ."
                          Final Report - Page 43                         h
 ---pagebreak---   Figure - START DATES FOR NATIONAL GROUPS
                      Contract     Start     Resources Renewal     End
                      signature date         available for Phase 2 Phase 2
  Belgium
    Leuven            17.09.84     15.10.84  04.12.84              Jul.88
    Liege             Apr . 86                         Apr . 86    Jul.88
  Denmark             25.10.84     01.11.84   Jan . 85 Jun.85      Jul.88
  Germany             20.12.84     01.01.85  06.03.85  Apr . 85    Jul.88
  Greece              Dec . 84     01.10.85            Jun.85      Jul.88
  France              Jul.85       01.01.86              n/a       Jul.88
  Ireland             Dec . 84    01.10.85             Sept . 85   Jul.88
  Italy               Jan . 87    01.01.87               n/a       Jul.88
  Luxemoourg          Jun.84      01.01.85             Apr . 85    Jul.88
  Netherlands         Sep . 86    01.09.86  17.12.86     n/a       Jul.88
  Portugal            Mar . 87    01.07.87               n/ a      Mar . 89
  Spain               Dec . 86    01.09.87  27.05.87     n/a       Dec.80
  United Kingdom      Apr . 85    01.10.85      1
                                                       Oct . 85    Jul.88
                             Final Report - Page 44
H
 ---pagebreak--- APPENDIX B :       ORGANISATION AND FINANCIAL ASPECTS
B.l      EUROTRA General Management
В . 1.2        CGC-12
173     CGC-12 is the Advisory body to tne European Commission on
        Linguistic Problems. It advises all DGs and covers all areas of
        linguistics .   The only major project in this area is currently
        EUROTRA, and EUROTRA is one of the main reasons CGC-12 was set up .
        It took over the functions of the ACPM (Advisory Committee on
        Project Management). CGC-12 is officially a sub-committee of CREST
        and is made up of two national delegates from eacn of the Member
        States who are usually senior civil servants , and two
        representatives from the Commission. CGC-12 appears to have been
        an enlightened committee which takes broad ranging view and
        discusses initiatives put forward by individual representatives
         ( for example the EUROTRA Central Institute). Meetings are held at
        least once a year , with a quorum of two-thirds of the Member States
        and the Commission.
174     There is a Technical Task Force of experts , chairea by Professor
        Zampolli , which prepares technical papers at the request of CGC-12 .
B.1.3         Common Steering Committee
175 . The Common Steering Committee was set up to facilitate the
        administration of the Contracts of Association between the European
        Commission and the individual funding bodies in the Member States .
        Instead of having separate monitoring from the individual funaing
        bodies , the Common Steering Committee does this . It was set up at .
        the beginning of Phase 2 as the Contracts of Association were
        implemented and meets three times a year . Decisions on major
        issues specific to a single Contract of Association shall in
        principle only be taken by the Committee members representing the
        Community and the Associate . It would appear that CSC has been
        particularly effective in ensuring that adequate resources are
        given to the EUROTRA project. It was CSC which finally started the
        employment of the liaison staff in Luxembourg , by going beyond its
        mandate and directly petitioning the Commissioners in Brussels .
        The CSC members are mainly University Administrators or civil
        servants working in the field.
176     The CSC members feel that there is -not enough authority over the
        financial aspects of the project , or the technical aspects. There
        are not sufficient opportunities for bringing in experts to look at
        the financial and technical situation and getting a critical opinion.
                              Final Report - Page 45
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                                                                                       R«$earctt'<ïroüps ~
 ---pagebreak---  В . 1.4       Liaison Group
 177     Th'e Liaison Group is made up of the Heaa of the Research Unit , or
          their nominated alternates , from each National Group , plus the Head
         of the Project of the Contract or a staff member of the Project
         Group. Each National Group has one vote and the Commission has a
         vote and  veto .
 178     It is mandated to :
         Prepare for approval by the CSC , programmes of work for each
         Research Unit ;
         Determine milestones , methods and procedures of evaluation for the
         intermediate and final results in each phase ;
         Determine the theoretical , scientific and technical choices to be
         complied with by the Research Units ;
         Determine the theoretical , scientific and technical choices to be
         complied with by non-associate contractors ;
        Prepare and agree upon opinions on the reports of the Contracts of
        Association ;
        Formulate Recommendations to the Head of Project concerning the
        conduct of the operations of common interest ;
        Identify problem areas to be tackled by ad-hoc working groups and
        decode their creation , composition and terms of reference.
179     The Liaison Group discusses the administration and the technical
        content of the project. The Chairman prepares the agenda in
        advance and circulates it for comments .   The Chairman 's tasks take
        about 50% one person 's time. Papers for the meeting are prepared by
        the Chairman and the technical working groups . Individual National
        Groups also give reports of progress . The planning of the project -
        is done by the Liaison Group , but only in 3 month "chunks ". There
        appears to be no long term planning at any level , several members
        of the liaison group complained that they were only able to plan up
        to three months in advance .
                             Final Report - Page 47                        %
 ---pagebreak---  180  During the monthly two day meetings there are approximately 20
      decisions made .  Of these most are unanimous , but 2 or 3 are voted
      on . A two-thirds majority is required (providing it always
      includes the vote of the Commission ) and the European Commission
      have a veto which is selaom used . Where a decision cannot be
      reached , the CSC are asked to decide .
181  There were several criticisms of the Liaison Group . Some national
     groups ( French ) said that it only discussed administration and that
      important technical questions were never reachea on the agenaa .
     Other groups said that it kept unnecessarily re-discussing '
     technical details which had alreaay been arguea through in the
     technical subgroups .
182  The Liaison Group works amazingly well considering the numoer of
     disparate scientific opinions represented. It is unlikely that a
     development project of any size could be managed this way , but a
     Community Research project does appear to be going ahead well using
     this unorthodox democratic method .
183  There appears to be a certain amount of unease about the Commission
     veto from some National Groups . This is partly from the people who
     have been in the project a long time , who see the Commission
     forcing them to " implement , implement", when they want to continue
     research and do more experimentation before implementation . This is
     one area where lack of definition between researcn and development
     shows up most clearly .
184  The Netherlands and the UK now have a sideline project which was
     originally rejected by the Liaison group. This involved testing
     the EUROTRA tneory by implementing it on one particular pair . It
     includes modules not developed or used by other groups . The two
     Groups continued work on their own and this side project was then
     included in the EUROTRA project . This was the first project to be
     accepted in this way , and many group members hope that other
     projects could be accepted . It was initially vetoed because it was
     felt that there would be problems if the research started going off
     in too many directions at once . The Central Operations in
     Luxembourg still do not approve of this approach .
                           Final Report - Page 48
 ---pagebreak---  B.2   Central Operations
 185   The Central Operations are defined as those people who are not
       funded by a National Group, although they may be located with them .
       There are three obvious parts : (a ) those located in Luxembourg (b)
       those working with National Groups and ( c) previous to April 1987 ,
       ISSCO .                ^
 B.2.1      Luxembourg
 186   The Central Operations in Luxemoourg have been working on the
       EUROTRA project since 1981 . There are only two machine translation
       specialists employed by DGXIII in the EUROTRA team in Luxembourg :
       Sergei Perschke and Nino Varile.    The budget for the Central
       Operations includes a contingency for 14 people . Since 1985 they
       have been attempting to build up their resources , initially with
       the "loan" of four translators , but do not seem to have been given
       any help by the Commission themselves in terras of recruitment.
      They have now had more translators seconded from DGIX to work with
       the individual National Groups .  In two cases these translators had
      experience in computational linguistics , but the majority do not.
      A course is currently being run in computational linguistics for
      these translators , but it is estimated that it will take at least a
      year in post before they are fully effective. There are currently
      8 out of the current 9 translator posts filled and another 5 posts
      are envisaged .
                                      National Group Liaison
      Flavia Borsani                  Belgium ( Dutch ); Netherlands
      Panayota Kalamvoka              Greece ; United Kingdom
      Peter Lau                       Denmark ; Spain
      Joachim Ozdoba                  France ; Germany ; Portugal
      Erwin Valentini                 Italy
     Jurgen Vollmer                  Belgium ( French ) ; Ireland
      M O'Leary                      Luxembourg
187  The National Groups have on the whole been very critical of the
      scientific direction of the Central Operations . In the current
     situation they feel that the support liaison staff are not only
      inexperienced , but do not seem to have the initiative to
     communicate with the National Groups . Some research Groups have
     never seen their allocated liaison person , but others say that
     there is no need for liaison at this level anyway . An additional
     problem appears to be that there is an inadequate central travel
     budget which does not allow meetings between the liaison person in
                           Final Report - Page 49                        n
 ---pagebreak---      Luxembourg and the . national groups . The weakness of the central
     control shows up in the lack of self-confidence of some of the
     central staff and the fact that communication between the national
     groups is not promoted centrally . One example of this is the lack
     of enthusiasm for the use of the EUROKOM messaging and conference
     system which has been supplied. It is maintained that the lack of
     use is due to access ana telecommunications problems , but this is a
     somewhat feeble excuse .
188  It would certainly appear that Central Operations does not have the
     knowledge or experience to help the " late-starter " to catch-up.
189 There is a disparity between National Groups over the amount of
    sciertific direction they feel the project needs . Scientifically
    advarced groups feel that they do not require airection , since they
    are the leaders in most fields. The late starting groups such as
    the Dutch , feel that they require considerably more direction and
    that long running issues , such as semantic relationships , should be
    resolved centrally .
190 There appear to be four main functions within the Central
    Operations :
    administration
    planning
    political aspects
    scientific direction
191 Many groups feel that up till now Sergei Perschke nas been
    attempting to do all these functions and not succeeding at any .
    They do not criticize him , or the Project as a whole , but his lack
    of support and resources.
192 The full time administration under Marian O'Leary seems to have
    helped in the administrative work with the National Groups , and has
    improved general communication between the management and technical
    aspects of the project .
                          Final Report - Page 50
 ---pagebreak---  B. 2 . 2      National Groups/Wor king Groups
 193 In the past the scientific support has been from subgroups made up
          of people working part-time with National Groups , or located with
          national groups and working full time for Central Operations .
          These groups appear to have worked well in the past , coordinated by
          ISSCO personnel .  National Groups commented that the detailed
          technical work of the Liaison Group could well be left to these
          sub-groups , unless experienced staff were to be utilised in
          Luxembourg .
 194     The sub-groups which currently appear in the documentation suppliea
         by the Luxembourg documentation centre (dated 3 June 1987 ) are :
         Working Group ( aaministered by )
         EUROTRA Planning Committee ( still documented as ISSCO function )
         EUROTRA Problem Office ( still documented as ISSCO function)
         EUROTRA Central team MU-2 ( Utrecht )
        MU-1 Group/I S-Group ( still documented as ISSCO function )
         EUROTRA Coordinators ( stili documented as ISSCO function )
         Dictionary Group ( UMIST )
        Turbo Group ( Saarbruecken )
        Demo Committee ( UMIST )
        Engineering Framework Group ( Central - N Varile )
         IS Group ( Central - E Valentini )
        User Language Group ( Central - B Maegaard )
        Dictionary Task Force ( Central - A Michiels )
        Terminology Group ( Central - C Albertini )
195     It would seem that these groups are being run down in as much as
        there was little mention of them in the interviews .   One comment
        made by the UK was that no-one seems to know what the groups are
        any more , who is in them and who the contact people are . However ,
        this information is continuously online on EUROKOM . One of the
        main problems is that there are too few key experts , and the work
        priorities for them tend to change. The Framework Group has taken
        many resources from the other Working Groups .
196     The current situation as at July regarding the Working Groups was
        in fact :
       Working Group ( administered by )
       EUROTRA Planning Committee (B Maegaard )
       EUROTRA Problem Office ( stili undecided )
       EUROTRA Central team MU-2 ( non-existent )
                                                                             oO
                              Final Report - Page 51
 ---pagebreak---        MU-1 Group ( Central - E Valentini )
       EUROTRA Coordinators ( Central - S Perschke )
       Dictionary Group ( integrated into Task Force )
      Turbo Group ( absorbed into Engineering Framework Group )
       Demo Committee ( Central « A Becker )
       Engineering Framework Group ( Central - N Varile )
       IS Group ( Central - E Valentini )
       User Language Group ( Central - D Maas )
      Dictionary Task Force ( Central - A Michiels )
      Terminology Group ( Central - C Albertini )
197   The Luxembourg National Group also feel that there is too little
      coordination. They understand their function to be part of Central
      Operations in that they are controlling the documentation and
      testing , but it appears to be "optional” for National Groups to
      deposit documents and notify them of changes , so they are not
      receiving all that is produced arid are not being kept up to date
      with personnel changes . They feel they should also be the centre
      for the establishment of the necessary test environment for the
      EUROTRA software and development of test criteria. As the IEGI
      will act as the institution for the tasks of maintenance and
      distribution of the EUROTRA software , this function should be
      determined in the EUROTRA contracts .     Further coordination could
      also include the collection of information on the developments of
      dictionaries for the different languages .
B.2.3       ISSCO
196   The Central Operations role has cnanged since the cessation of the
      ISSCO contract at the end of April 1987.      Before this ISSCO seemed
      to be carrying out with varying degrees of success the functions
      of :
      Liaison Group Secrétariat
      Problem Centre
      Liaison with individual groups
      Running various working groups
      Scientific direction
      Training
199  Of these functions , the Liaison group minutes and Beginners Course
      have transferred to the Central Team in Luxembourg and the Problem
      Office is now being run by one of the translators.      Apparently
      there has been little use of the Problem Office since it moved to
      Luxembourg .
                            Final Report - Page 52
 ---pagebreak---  200    The Panel is of the opinion that the generally useful role played
        by ISSCO has so far not been taken over in any sufficient way by
        the central staff .
 201    It has been very difficult to find out exactly why the ISSCO
       contract ceased. From what we have been able to ascertain , the
       problems were political between the Member States , who felt that
       critical work should not be being carried out by a non-Member State
       organisation.   It was noted that all the organisations in CREST are
       in favour of inclusion of ISSCO.
 B.2.4       EUROTRA Central Institute
 202   At the CGC-12 meeting in November 1985 , a paper was tabled by the
       German delegation on a proposed EUROTRA Central Institute ( ECI ).
       This summarised the continuing problems of the Central Team in
       Luxembourg , and summarised the tasks of such an ECI , and gave
       possible structures , locations and funding . The tasks proposed
       would be :
       Central R & 0 work - linguistic specifications
                              software specifications
                              software implementation
                              integration of linguistic modules
                              production & maintenance of Reference Manual
                              interaction with national centres
                              evaluation methods for partial and final results
                             preparation of proposal for industrial
                               implementation
      State of the Art Analyses and Assessments
      Preparation of Framework Programme and Strategies
      Definition of Individual Projects
      Tecnriology Transfer
      Education and Training
203   This paper was briefly discussed , but no follow-up was made and the
      proposal was rejected by CGC-12. In view of the fact that so far
      all attempts to set up a " European Research Institutes " have
      failed , the Panel does not deplore rejection of this paper by
      CGC-12 .
                            Final Report - Page 53
                                                                           £2
 ---pagebreak---  B. 3   National Management
 B. 3.1       Finance
 204    The individual National Groups are structured and financed in a
        variety of ways.   In all countries except Germany and Italy they
        are part of a university environment. Some are in special
        departments of computational linguistics , other in more general
        language and literature departments. In Germany ana Italy the
        EUROTRA Group is part of a separate institute which carries out
        work on translation and linguistics in more general areas than just
        EUROTRA .
205    Where the EUROTRA Groups are part of a university department there
       are a variety of funding methods. In the Netherlands , for example ,
       a separate Foundation for Language Technology (Stichting
       Taal technolog ie) has been set up which is funded directly by the
       relevant Government Department , this foundation then receives money
       directly from the European Commission. The Foundation then pays
       the university for the staff with a 10% fee in addition. In some
       other countries , for example the United Kingdom , the Commission
       pays money directly to the university. In Portugal the group is
       supported by the JNICT, and the institutional structure of ILTEC is
       three universities , Lisbon , Oporto , Coimbra and JNICT. Despite the
       different organisational environments , there are no practical
       consequences .
206    The money paia to the EUROTRA budget in the National Groups by the
       Commission varies from 25% ( in the case of Germany and France) to
       85%‘ in the case of Luxembourg . This contribution was based on a
       formula which takes into account the population and the Gross
       National Proouct (GNP) .
                             Final Report - Page 54
 ---pagebreak---       Country               CEC                    National
                       contribution ( % )       contribution ( % )
     Belgium (Leuven) +     60                       40
     Belgium ( Liege )      60                       40
     Denmark                80                       20
     Germany                25                       75
     Spain                  60                       40
      France                25                       75
     Greece                 80                       20
      Ireland               80                       20
     Italy                  33                       67
     Luxembourg             85                       15
     Netherlands            60                       40
     Portugal               80                       20
     United Kingdom         30                       70
+ originally 50/50
207  The amount of accepted control by the Central Operations in in some
     cases linked to the amount of the Commission contribution.
208  This money from both national and European sources is intended to
     pay for the hardware , salaries and overhead and travelling . In the
     Groups which have been working on EUROTRA for several years about
     two-thirds of the money is spent on salary and overhead and one-
     third on travelling and equipment . Where the Groups have been set
     up more recently , a higher proportion is being spent on equipment .
209  In some recent cases there have been problems in transmission of
     the money . In the case of Spain , the Contract of Association was
     signed in December 1986 , the money was authorised in April 1987 and
     was not received in Spain until June 1987 . This caused substantial
     delays to the start of .the National Group , and researchers have
     been working without salary in order to get the project going . In
     Portugal , the national money was used to get the project going
     until the CEC money was received .
                           Final Report - Page 55
 ---pagebreak---  210    In many cases the national funding body " bankrolls " the local
        national group, by meeting expenses until the CEC money is
        received. This shows that in some cases the double source funding
        works well . However , in some cases the national funding is not
       sufficient to compensate for the oelay in CEC funding and serious
       delays have occurred where research cannot be commenced.
 211   The National Groups have to submiT?”reports detailing the use of the
       CEC and national funds. These have to be passed before the funds
       are released by the CEC. In all cases to date approval has been
       given , but apparently there .have been cases where there has been
       dissatisfaction in the Central Administration about the work and
     • reporting of the National Groups .
212    In some cases there may be a crisis coming up between the national
       and CEC funding . The CEC funding may be carried over from one
       financial year to another , but some national funding may not.
       Delays in the project have caused substantial underspending by
       National Groups and some national money may possibly be lost.
       Central Administration is currently trying to establish exactly
       what has been spent and committed by the National Groups to get
       some idea of the over/underspend situation. Where countries have
      underspent , it is .possible that this may be deducted from their
      next Contract of Association.
B.3.2       Staffing
213   In some countries the staff work partly for the University in
      teaching or other research posts and partly for EUROTRA. In the
      United Kingdom , for example , they have a policy of having full-time
      EUROTRA staff . In the Netherlands nearly all the EUROTRA staff have
      teaching commitments as well .
214   In Saarbruecken , besides a core of full-time linguists , there are
      many part-time translators who are working partly on EUROTRA and
      partly on commercial projects .    One of the reasons a separate
      institute had to be used in Italy was that there are severe
      problems in university staff working for external agencies . In the
      Portuguese Group , all the staff are currently working part-time .
     The leaaer of the Danish Group is on permanent leave from DGIX in
      Brussels . The Irish situation is difficult in that they have an
      embargo on additional staff recruitment in higher education , and
      having lost staff are having difficulty continuing the project .
                            Final Report - Page 56
 ---pagebreak---  215     An anomaly that was uncovered was the costs of- staff in each
         country. The funding is done on the same overall basis in each
         country and staff costs vary tremendously. In the UK , for example ,
          they are able to employ more staff on the project because salaries
         and overhead are a lot lower than in other countries .
 6.3.3          Internai Management
 216     Some groups are more structured than others in their internal
         administration of their EUROTRA project Group. In Germany where
         they are part of an external institute , they do -not have to spend
         time on administration , because this is taken care of by the local
         sponsor of the institute. The Dutch Group have calculated that they
         spend about 20% of their time in management as opposed to research.
B.3.4          Liaison Between National Groups
217      Communications between individual National Groups is generally very
         gooa . Special relationships have built up , partly where people are
         working on the the same part of the project or in the same sub¬
        group ( Mu-2 or semantic aspects for example), and partly on the
        work between specific language pairs. In the case of the UK and
        the Netherlands/Leuven group , this has developed into a specific
        sub-project mentioned elsewhere. To a certain extent this
        highlights the way that countries with a commonality of language
        school , and similar linguistic traditions tend to form closer
        relationships .
218     Where new groups enter EUROTRA , they often work very closely with
        an existing experienced National Group. This is the case with
        Spain , which has developea close working relationships with the
        Saarbruecken Group .
5.3 . 5        Sub-Groups within National Groups
219     In the United Kingdom , France , Greece , Germany and Italy , the work
        has been spread between more than one research unit. This has
        caused problems in some countries.
220     In the United Kingdom' it has been well organised , with the leaders
        of each research Groups attending the liaison group alternately
        ( which also has its drawbacks) and with frequent meetings between
        tne Groups . There has been some division of work between the
        intermediate structures and the transfer modules , and between the
        terminology and the software.
                              Final Report - Page 57
 ---pagebreak---  221  In Germany the work is centred in Saarbruecken with part of the work
      sub-contracted to Bonn. Stuttgart and Berlin are new national
      research centres in computational linguistics and are used as
      critical observers by the EUROTRA-D Group.
 222  In France there have been problems with coordination between the
      individual institutes in EUROTRA.    Currently Paris and Nancy are
      carrying out the research , but Grenoole and another Paris institute
      are coming in to the project.    There are now four French Groups :
     -   Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle ( LLF) - at the University of
         Paris under Professor Culioli ;
     - Pole Lorrain - the Nancy Group which is now a split up group ;
     -   Groupe d' Etudes pour la Traduction Automatique (GETA) - at the
         University of Grenoble ;
     -   Laboratoire d'Automatique Documentaire et Linguistique (LADL) - also
         in Paris , under M Gross.
223  To ensure that there is no repetition of past problems , a
     coordinator has been appointed from CNRS to manage the project from
     a national point of view .
224  Italy has been late in starting , and it is not clear if Pisa are
     totally committed to the project. The Turin team are working hard
     doing about 55% of the work , but Pisa are not aue to start until
     September , at which point they will work on the transfer modules
     for Spanish , Portuguese and Greek .
225  In Greece , only one interview was held. The work in Athens seems
     to have got underway , but Crete seems to have difficulties in
     getting started .
226  In Spain , the National Group is based in Barcelona , in association
     with research to be carried out at the University of Madrid , as of
     October 1987 .
                           Final Report - Page 58
 ---pagebreak--- . APPENDIX C :      TECHNICAL ASPECTS
  C.l    Reference Manual
  227   The two reference manuals provided for consultation were 2.1 and
         3.0 , both produced in February 1987 in Utrecht. The manuals
        contain the following Dasic sections :
        Principles
        Framework
        Dictionary
        Linguistic theory
        User language
        Description of implémentation
  22b   Within the manual it is stated that it is intended to give the
        Eurotrian an idea of the actual state of the project and to provide
        a common basis for discussion , research and planning .
  229   It was difficult to establish the absolute concepts behind the
        Reference Manual . Some National Groups like the Netherlands
        considered it to be a form of legislation , but in the manual it
      . says that it "does not necessarily imply that it [ the manual ] is
        correct , complete or totally consistent". This is understandable
        when the list of authors is consulted , as each expert writes the
        section on their own subject area.
 230    The UK group considered that once certain sections had been agreed
        on they could be used in this way , for example EUROTRA
        Configurational Structure (ECS ) or EUROTRA Relational Structure
        ( ERS ), but that certain areas had to remain vague , for example the
        interface structures . Some other groups disagreed saying that the
        fact that the interface structures were vague prevented them from
        continuing work.
 231    It would therefore appear that the Reference Manual is trying to
        carry out both the functions of a standards or specification
        document as well as being a method of communicating the latest
        ideas for discussion and comment. It is not apparent from the
        manual which parts are intended for which function .
 232    Several groups felt that EUROTRA had tried to include development
        and implementation material in the Reference Manual without a
        strong enough theoretical background.–
                               Final Report - Page 59
 ---pagebreak---  233  Tne Reference Manual went in the wrong direction wnen they started
      to define the virtual machine and Perschke asked people to work on
      the linguistic extension . Once this work was reviewed , it was felt
      that it led in the wrong direction and it was decided to rethink
      the functions . At this point the writing of the next version of
      the Reference Manual was brought in-house to Luxembourg , and this
      version has recently been released .
234   The general consensus was that the final version of the Reference
      Manual would actually be the specification of the EUROTRA system
      ( in 1990 ).
C.2  Linguistic aspects
235  The linguistics approach must be watched in the light of the dual
     goal of the project : to further research and to develop a prototype
     system .   On the one hand , the iaentif ication of fundamental
     problems , considerations about theory and method , the careful
     choice of data , provision for experimentation , a long term
     perspective , etc. are essential . On the other hand , early
     decisions on methodological legislation , linguistic shortcuts ,
     compromises , a short term perspective , etc. are brought to the
     fore . This situation leads inevitably to pragmatic solutions .
236  The well-known overall structure chosen - analysis , transfer ,
     generation - has the beauty of simplicity . In the multilingual
     case , however , the number of language pairs - n(n-l ) where n is the
     number of languages - is a potential obstacle . Already it strains
     the EUROTRA project. If the number of languages is increased by
     just four , the number of pairs is more than doubled , from 72 to
     156 .  This seems to indicate that a modified or different overall
     structure woula be preferable in the long run.
237  In the given situation , the choice of linguistic models is
     reasonable . To the extent to which it is specified it makes use of
     ideas from , for example , stratif icational , dependency , and case
     grammar . The project is aware of the fact that a number of
     notorious problems can only partly or not at all be solvea with
     these ( or in some cases any other ) means . Cases in point are , for
     example , anaphoric pronouns , definiteness in nouns , modality in
     verbs , correct but intricate structures of various types ,
     ungrammatical sentences ( which crop up over and over again ) etc .
                           Final Report - Page 60
 ---pagebreak---  238  The interface structure , which is the representation of the
       semantic content of the text , is based on the previous levels of
      analysis of Che utterance to be translated. This means it is
      language-dependent to a certain extent. A more abstract *
      representation would have been preferable. Considering the state
      of affairs , offering only fragments of such a type of description ,
      there is little ground for criticism on this point. The
      specification of semantic features and semantic relations necessary
      for establishing the interface structure , however , will require a
      considerable additional effort.
239   The dictionary is crucial in a machine translation system , as well
      as in most systems for natural-language processing . The amount of
      work required for working out this component has most certainly
      been underestimated in the project. Generally speaking , there are
      good printed monolingual dictionaries of the languages concerned ,
      but making them into machine dictionaries is a great effort
      considering the specificity and additional information required.
240   The two numbers of dictionary entries prescribed for the prototype
      system (2,500 and 20,000 ) are arbitrary, related to the arbitrary
      size of' the corpus and to the SYSTRAN experience. The figures also
     mean different things if they refer to French or German or Italian ,
     etc. Irrespective of this , 20,000 . is too much for a prototype
     system , but far too little for a real system.
241  The lack of bilingual dictionaries in a great number of cases is a
     drawback. It will have to be compensated for by a lot of dedicated
     work On the whole , the important contrastive aspect deserves more
     attention .
242  It is    well known that the content of a sentence cannot be
     exhaustively and unambiguously calculated from the string of
     letters . A really powerful system has to make use of a wider
     context ( sometimes much wider) and a big knowledge base of great
     complexity in addition to the large and very detailed dictionary .
     Even so it is improper to talk about language understanding in a
     computational environment. A machine will never be able to
     understand such a subtle product of the creative human mind as a
     manifestation of language . At best some kind of decoding can be
     obtained However , this is an extremely important ena and the way
     of arriving there is very illuminating .
                           Final Report - Page 61                          cf0
 ---pagebreak---  243   In view of the fact that a fully automatic translation is not
       within reach additional steps will have to be taken The most
      obvious step is to include postediting This is widely agreed upon
      among those active in the project and it is to be looked upon as
      quite natural . However , there are also suggestions concerning the
      source text.   The idea put forward is to impose restrictions on
       those writing the documents to be translatea.      But this can have
      ominous ramifications .    Any kind of preediting , restricting the use
      of full natural language , shoula be strongly discouragea . . The fact
      that clarity and readability must be aimed at in all types of
      writing is a different matter .
 244  Historically speaking all the nine languages are dialects of the
      same Indo-European protolanguage This has probably a bearing on
      the project . It would seem that it could be helpful , even if the
      languages have developed along varying lines . With regard to
      generalisability in a wider sense - involving languages like
      Japanese , Chinese , Swahili , Hungarian , etc. - it remains to be seen
      what the result would be .
245  The Council decision of 4 November 1982 is on a research and
     development programme for "a machine translation system of advanced
     design” . It is evident that the design of a system can be advanced
     - which is fundamental for research' - even if its lingual output
     doesn't meet the highest standards of quality. The situation is
     reminiscent of BCirger 's poem about the dying owner of a vineyard
     who told his children there was a treasure in his vineyard. The
     children went digging all over the place but were disappointed.
     However , they got the message the next year when the vines bore
     three times as many grapes as before.
C.3  System Architecture
246  The Virtual Machine for Machine Translation is the current concept
     and tools in hardware and software are determined by this Machine .
     The machine translation system , currently under development in
     Phase 2 , is based on the " Framework Engineering " report. Some of
     the following information is further gathered from an interview
     with Nino Varile .
                            Final Report - Page 62
 ---pagebreak---  247   Framework Engineering follows the basic idea that machine
       translation goes through a series of representations of the text to
       be translated.   The transitions between representations are
      performed by translators. A representation is defined by a
      generator using a grammar , i.e. a set of rules (structure , feature ,
       filter rules).  These rules in full generality comprise the
      "dictionary " as feature rules . The translators are mainly
      controlled by the generator steps via default t-rules , which are
      not written explicitly but generated by the generators . This eases
      the development of translators . Generator structure rules contain
      variables to increase the efficiency of the program .
 248  This methodological approach to machine translation is more
      systematic than the former ones which applied translators ,
      generators and dictionaries of different kinds and as different
      components . It supports the utilization of a database system for
      the uniform storage of grammars and t-rules. It still requires a
      rule interpreter which no longer needs to be a standard Prolog
      interpreter but can be optimized to the optimal form of rules
      (grammars) as developed in the machine translation project. Since
      the representation of rules in the database system needs to be
      transformed into an interpretable format , this transformer can be
     optimized to both the rule representation and the rule interpreter .
      By this , flexibility is maintained through the use of the database
     system whereas efficiency can be achieved by efficient interpreters
     and transformers .
249  It snould also oe mentioned that the introduction of artificial
     intelligence methods is supported by this approach, the framework
     engineering can already be regarded as an artificial intelligence
     system .
250  The Framework Engineering software system is based on a UNIX
     environment using C as the implementation language ano UNIFY as the
     database system . This basic tool environment , together with a good
     UNIX implementation , will most likely increase the efficiency of
     the machine translation system substantially. It neeos to be
     supported by a powerful computer hardware of the modern 32 bit type
     (especially for the unification). The possibilities of
     parallelisation of machine translation operations need to be
     further investigated .
251  Framework Engineering is a promising approach , but will exhibit its
     full capabilities only through well designed and efficient
     implementations of C programs with an industrial quality level .
                           Final Report - Page 63
 ---pagebreak---  C.4   Software
 25 ?  The software available today is a rather old version compared witn
       the already existing further versions. The discussions with
       Central Operations made clear that the design conflicts between
       flexibility and efficiency were well considered in the decisions
       towards the next software generations . At the same time
       considerable efforts were made towards the maintenance and even
       increase of software portability.
253   The results of these considerations and decisions are the
      employment of improved software engineering techniques , as well as
       some changes in the computer linguistic methods applied. The
      latter methods are reported in EUROTRA documents which are not yet
      distributed. Software packages employing these new methods are
      under test in the central EUROTRA development facilities , but not
      yet distributed. The new software engineering decisions are
      intended to lead to contracts with industry for prototype
      implementatipns. The reference specifications for these
      implementations have not yet been written , and it must be clarified
      what manpower and computer science capacity is available for
      performing this important task . It is understood that these
      industrial implementations must be the property of the CEC. They
      must be developed in close cooperation with the central EUROTRA
      team in order to enable EUROTRA to continue work on those new
      industrial versions .
C.4.1       History of the EUROTRA software
254   In 1981 the necessity of flexible software for the development of
      MT systems was realized by S. Perschke , R. Johnson and N. Varile .
      For 'the highest possible portability they chose UNIX as the
      unaerlying operating system. An appropriate software environment
      woulo have been the language C , but for the sake of rapid
      prototyping they chose an PROLOG language environment.
                            Final Report - Page 64
 ---pagebreak---  255  The software versions were and are numbered according to their
      underlying reference manuals :
      Oate           Ref  Manual    Software Vers   Remarks
      Jan '86        1.0                 1.0
      March '86     1.1                  1.1        Not distributed
      July '86       1.2                 1.2        Current version
     Oct '86        2.0                  2.0        New concepts
      Feb '87       2.1                  2.1        Attributed grammars
      Feb '87       3.00             Two alternatives
                                         3.0 Introduction of coindexation
                                         3.1 " Framework Engineering "
256  The low efficiency of Version 1.2 has different reasons :
     -     PROLOG is not suited to the implementation of highly
           procedural Early Type Parsers .
     -     Author had only few experiences with PROLOG system implementation
           ( the efficient use of very high level languages requires knowledge
         . about the underlying implementation of the language itself).
     -     The improved version 1.2 (Saarbruecken) was distributed but
           not extensively used by the language groups.
257  The new versions 2.0 and 3.0 are under test and have not yet been
     aistrioutea. - The central operations software development group put
     high emphasis on the Framework Engineering version 3.1 , where
     among others some transfer rules between two generator phases can be
     derived automatically . It is the goal of the new versions to
     increase the efficiency of use through :
           more powerful linguistic concepts ( relational grammar )
           new concepts of rule processing ( full unification implementation i
           the language C)
     -     new concept of rule administration , generation and interpretation
258  To achieve the latter improvement, rules and grammars are stored in
     a data base system (UNIFY). The contents of the data base are
     tooay translated into PROLOG predicates , which then are interpreted
     by a PROLOG rule interpreter . In future the data base contents
     will be "downloaded " into the working memory of a rule interpreter
     implemented in C. This downloading needs some transformation for
     the interpreter , which must be developed first and will be the
     important part of tne new reference specification for industrial
     contractors .
                           Final Report - Page 65                        7?
 ---pagebreak---  259   The advantage of this approach ought to be highly efficient rule
       interpretation without, the PROLOG formalism , combined with the
       flexibility of rule input/update/administration through a data base
       system. Although the use of a data base system should enhance the
       flexibility of rule and grammar . storage , the choice of a relational
       data base and UNIFY in particular is questionable , considering the
       types of information to be stored and retrieved . But the lack of
       object oriented data base systems could justify the selection of a
       highly efficient and flexible relational database . Nevertheless it
       is not clear whether UNIFY is specially suited to this application .
 260  This Framework Engineering approach seems to be reasonable but
      depends highly on the kind of rule storage in the -data base system ,
      and the rule transformation for the C implemented rule interpreter .
      So far this is still " research ".
C.4.2       Summary
261   Flexibility will be maintained through the data base approach .
      Portability will be supported by the use of UNIX/XOPEN and C.
262   Efficiency will be increased through faster computers and the
      implementation of rule treatment in the language C. On the medium
      term investigations on possible parallelisms in rule treatment
     ought to produce results . This would in addition be supported by
      the application of an ICOT machine .
263  Portability will be maintained by the use of UNIX and C. Recent
     experiments with XOPEN have been encouraging .
264  The ergonomics of language groups work could be increased by better
     usage of UNIX properties , (perform development work in the
     foreground while rule/grammar tests run in the background ). This
     needs high performance machines which will be required for speeding
     up the EUROTRA R&D process .
265  The initial decision for a declarative system without the
     procedural possibilities of controlling the treatment of language
     specialities still cause efficiency problems . But the better
     unoerstanoability of rules compared with procedural implementations
     supports this initial decision. As a result , a complexity analysis
     for the 1.2 version software has been performed .     As a result the
     procedural A rules within a PROLOG system are obviously the reason
     for the low efficiency of this version.
                           Final Report - Page 66
 ---pagebreak--- 266 A test of the 3.1 version with the 1.2 grammar complexity is unaer
    way . First results will be available by mid-1987 . They are the
    basis for the research towards the downloading transformations
    within version 3.1 and the new reference specifications for the
    industrial contract .
                                                                     %
                       Final Report - Page 67
 ---pagebreak---   APPENDIX D : INTERVIEWS CARRIED OUT TO END JULY 1987
  European
   Parliament :        M Gauthier
 CGC- 12/CSC :         J M Czermak
                       A Saunders
                       P Rothwe 11
                       A Zampolli
 CEC :                 M Carpentier
                       V Paragon Collada
                       C Jansen van Rosendaal
 Central Operations : S Perschke
                       G Varile .
                       M O'Leary
                       E Valentini
                      J Vollmer
                       L Rolling
 Liaison Group :      B Maegaard
NATIONAL GROUPS
Denmark :             P Andersen
                      A Bech
                      A Hartnack
                      B Maegaard
                      0 Toge by
Dutch :               S Krauwer
                      L aes Tombes
                      F Van Eynde
                      Prof Van Hinken
French :              L Danlos
                      M Gross
                      L Viet
Germany :             H Haller
                      P Schmidt
                      A Wright
                      R Sharp
                      D Maas
Greece :              A Koutsoudas
                            Final Report - Page 68
 ---pagebreak---  Irelana :        C Albertini
 Italy :          C Oltana
                  V Allegranza
                  L Sciolla
                  G Malnati
Luxembourg :      N Rischette
                  H Zingel
Portugal :       Joao Peres
Spain :          N Bel-Rafecas
                 R Cerda Masso
                 M Meya-Llopart
                 J  C Ruiz-Anton
                 J  Vidal-Villalba
                 S  Balar i-Ravera
                 E  Mas Batalla
United Kingdom.: J Durand
                 D Arnold
                 L Sadler
                 L Humphrey
                 J Pugh
                      Final Report - Page 69
 ---pagebreak---   APPENDIX E : BIOGRAPHIES OF ASSESSMENT PANEL
   Dr A.E. Pannenborg
  1922         Born in the Hague
   1943-1946   Military Service in the ( free ) Dutch Forces
   1947        Final degree in Technical Physics , Technical University Delft
  1952         Doctor . Technical Sciences , Technical University Delft
  1948-1951    Scientist , Philips Research Laboratory , Eindhoven
  1952-1955    Development Coordination Bureau , Head Office , Philips ,
               Eindhoven
  1955-1963    Founding Director of the Philips Forschungs-Laborator ium ,
               Aachen , Germany
  1963-1968    Director of Research of the Philips Research Laboratory ,
               Eindhoven
  1969         Member of the Boara of Management of N.V. Philips'
              Gloeilampenfabrieken
  1977        Vice-Chairman of the Board of Management of N.V. Philips
  1.6.84       Retired from active duty with N.V. Philips
  Additional functions :
        Chairman of the Board of Netherlands Stuay Centre for Technology
        Trends ( STT )
        Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Nederlanase Philips
        Bedrijven B.V.
        Part-time Professor for the Management of Research ana Development
        at the Technical University of Delft
        Advisor to the Minister of Industry of the Republic of Singapore
        Member of the Board of the Technisch Physische Dienst (TH-TNO) ,
        Delft
        Chairman of the Advisory Council of the Technology Management Unit
        of IMI ( International Management Institute )
        September/October 1985 invitea by the Harvara Business School as
        guest-lecturer
        Part-time Professor at the Erasmus University at the Tinbergen
        Cnair for the course 1986/ 1987
7Τ
                               Final Report - Page 70
 ---pagebreak---  Distinctions :
 Doctor Ingenieur Ehrenhalber of the Rheinisch-Westfaelische Technical
 Institute , Aachen , Germany
 Honorary member of the Koninklijk Instituut van Ingenieurs
Officer in the Order of Oranje Nassau
Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion
 Foreign Member of the Ingen^oersvetenskapsakademiens , Stockholm
Corresponaing member of the Schweizerische Akaaemie der technischen
Wissenschaften , Zuerich
Foreign Member of the British Fellowship of Engineering , London
Andre Danzin
1919        Born in Paris . Studied at Ecole Polytechnique and Ecole
            Supérieure d' Electr ici te .
1943-1972 With Compagnie Generale de TSF (CSF) Group , later Thomson CSF
            ( 1967 ). Successively Research Engineer , Head of Laboratory ,
            Technical Director , Managing Director , and Vice-President
            Managing Director (1965-1972).
1972-1980 Director of IRIA ( Institut de Recherche d' informatique et
            d 'Automatique ) .
1980-       International consultant ; Chairman of Intergovernmental
            Information Technology Committee of (Jnesco ; adviser to
            Commission of the European Communities and to NATO.
Additional functions
Ex-Cnairman of CERD ( Comité Européen de R & D). Author of " Science ana
Second Renaissance of Europe " ( Pergamon 1979 ), and of " La Société
Française et la Technologie " (Documentation Française 1981 ). Also
responsiDle for electronics section of the encyclopaedia " Les Techniques
de l' Inçenieur ".
                                                                        ΊΰΟ
                               Final Report - Page 71
 ---pagebreak---   Sture AI14n
  1928         Born Gflteborg
  1965         Fil . Dr , Scandinavian Languages , University of Gfiteborg
  1972         Professor of Computational Linguistics , Swedish Research
               Council and University of GBteborg
 1980          One of the Eighteen in the Swedish Academy
 1980-1986 Vice-Rector University of GOteborg
 1986          Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy
 Publications ( Sélection )
 Graphemic Analysis as a Basis for Text Editing 1-2 , Diss . 1965
 Natural Language Processing ( Ed. ) 1970
 Frequency Dictionary of Present-Day Swedish 1-4 ( with others ) 1970-1980
 Text Processing , Proceedings of a Nobel Symposium ( Ed. ) 1980
A Dictionary of Swedish ( with others ) , 1986
 Possible Worlds in Arts and Sciences , Proceedings of a Nobel Symposium
 ( Ed. ) , 1966
Bartvig O. Steusloff
1937          Born in Gelsenkirchen , FRG
              Education in Communication Engineering at the Technical
              Universities of Darmstadt and Munchen , FRG
1977          Dr. rer . nat in Computer Science at Technical University of
              Karlsruhe , FRG
1967          Professor at the Department of Computer Science of Karlsruhe
              Technical University
H. U. Steusloff is director at the Fraunhof er-lnstitute of Information
and Data Processing , Karlsruhe FRG, and Institute of Applied Research in
Computer Science for applications of computer systems in production.
Main working areas are hardware , operating software and languages for
real-time computer systems , including data bases and artificial
intelligence .
His scientific and teaching activities are concerned with computer
architectures for parallel processing and the supporting software
components like communication systems as well as systems engineering .
                               Final Report - Page 72
 ---pagebreak---   Henri Dieuzeide
  1925       Born
  1960       Director , French Educational Radio and TV
 1967        Director , Division Contents Methods of Education , Unesco
             Director , Prospects - Unesco Quarterly of Education {edited in
             6 languages)
 1982        Invited Professor School of Education , Stanford fliTiversity , USA
 1985        Inspector General for foreign languages teaching French
             Ministry of Eaucation
 Helen L Henderson
 Helen Henderson is Executive Director of Information Management and
 Engineering , a London-based computer software and consultancy company .
 She is also Secretary of EUSIDIC , the European Association of
 Information Services and has been involved in the European information
 industry as a user , provider and consultant for over 15 years .
 Originally a geologist , her jobs have included running a large
 industrial information unit , lecturing in library practice , marketing
 geological databases and cataloguing for the British National
Bibliography .
She has carried out consultancy in information resource management , on
database marketing stuaies , on electronic publishing and document
delivery and has been involvea in the planning , design and setting up of
" thira generation" databases .
Peter Vickers
Mr Vickers originally trained as an aircraft engineer with the de
Havilland Aircraft Company , and after a two-year spell in Paris and Rome
rejoined that firm as an information officer . Later , while working in
the electricity industry , he became interested in the application of
computer-based information systems. In 1967 , after fourteen years as a
practising information scientist , he joined the Aslib Consultancy
Service , and in 1979 became Head of the Research and Consultancy
Division. As a consultant , he has worked on a wide variety of projects
in many countries . In recent years , however , he has specialised in
information management projects for government organisations and large
industrial companies . He is now a partner 'in an independent consulting
firm , The Information Partnership. He has published widely in the
professional press and is a Fellow of the Institute of Information
Scientists .
                                                                           407
                            Final Report - Page 73
 ---pagebreak---                                                                           ANNEX H
                                            EUROTRA
                                 PROGRAMME OF WORK OF THE
                                         THIRD PHASE
 1 . INTRODUCTION
     The programme of work covers the following actors in Eurotra
     – the " language groups " concerned with the analysis and synthesis of their
         own languages and with the transfer from the other languages into their
         own languages : DK , DE , EN , ES , FR , GR , IT , NL , PL ;
     -   the Irish group which        is  entrusted     with    the   coordination of the
         terminological work ;
     -   the Luxembourg group which is to ensure the function of the
         documentation centre and of the test and reference centre and clearing
         house for the software ;
     –   the project team in the Commission - reinforced by scientists of the
         national teams and consultants , ensuring the central operations .
2 . Programme of the Language Groups
     The work of the language groups covers two main subjects :
     -   the implementation work aiming at the creation of the relevant analysis ,
         synthesis and transfer modules , including the lexicographic and
         terminological work ;
     – applied linguistic research concerning both general linguistic problems
        and the specific languages .
     It is estimated that approximately 50% of the resources of each language
     group will be dedicated to implementation work and 50% to research .
     2.1 .  Implémentation work
     The implementation work is based on the centrally produced linguistic
     specifications contained in the reference manual , which is periodically
     revised so as to include the improvements coming from the applied research
     activities . The main objectives are the extension of the linguistic
     coverage of the modules and the resolution of ambiguities .
 ---pagebreak---                                            - 2 -
     The lexicographic work is subdivided in two parts :
     –   The general vocabulary which is estimated at some 5-6,000 entries will
         include both the monolingual dictionary used for analysis and synthesis
         and eight bi – lingual dictionaries for each group used for transfer .
    -   The technical terminology in the subject field chosen (a sub-field of
         information technology ), estimated at some 14-15,000 entries , which does
        not require transfer .
    2.2 .   Applied Research
    The applied research work of the language groups concerns on the one hand
     language specific work which must be carried out to complete the general
     linguistic specifications which , except for the interface structure , are
    rather guidelines for each representation , before implementation work can
    start . On the other hand , it implies participation in the research of
    general interest coordinated by the central team , and experimental testing
    of the research results before these become binding specifications for the
    implementation . Special attention will be given to the semantic features
    and other lexical information needed for the resolution of ambiguities in
    analysis , synthesis and transfer .
3 . IRELAND
    The principal task of the Irish group is the coordination of the
    terminological work for Eurotra . It consists of the following operations :
    -   extraction of the relevant terminology from existing           sources   ( ISO ,
        Eurodicautom , etc .) in all languages available ; .
    -   extraction of additional terms from the text corpora used during the
        third phase ;
    -   coordination of the assignement of the equivalents         by the     language
        groups where they are missing ;
    - research into ways of expanding that part of vocabulary which can be
        treated like terminology in Eurotra ;
    - research in subject field classification and sub-languages in view of
        their use in Eurotra .
                                                                      . ./. .
 ---pagebreak--- 4.   LUXEMBOURG
     The Luxembourg group has two project support tasks
     4.1 Documentation centre
     The group collects and indexes all relevant documents produced in the
     project and makes them available to the whole Eurotra community , especially
     via an on-line data base .
     4.2 Test and Reference Centre and Clearinghouse for Software
    The group collects the software produced or used within the project ,
    carries out the acceptance tests and distributes it to the other national
    groups .
5 . PROJECT TEAM
    In addition to the purely managerial functions of the project team
     ( budgets , contracts , resource planning etc ,), the following tasks are
    fulfilled by the central team ( the work is usually shared between staff
    members of the Commission and working groups from the national teams ).
    -    Planning : The elaboration of a detailed programme of work for the
         entire phase , the definition of the objectives of the first cycle and
         the definition of the content and objectives of each quarter .
    -    Internal assessment : Permanent review of the progress made both by the
         national teams and the research of general interest , and feedback to
         planning , by suggesting corrective actions in case of problems .
    -    Testing of linguistic modules : At the end of each reference period , and
         after the formal acceptance testing by the Luxembourg team , the project
         team analyses and tests the modules with respect to coverage and
         conformity with the specifications .
    -    Design and implementation of the prototype software . The project team
         coordinates these tasks , and performs conformance testing of the new
         releases before they are distributed to the national groups .
    -    Monitoring   of  the  " industrial implementation    of the  basic Eurotra
         software . It is expected to the organism entrusted with this task will
         be selected before the end of the second phase .
    -    Definition of the themes      for applied  linguistic research of general
         interest , setting up and monitoring of the working groups who carry out
         the work , coordination of the experimental testing by the national teams
         and incorporation of the results in the reference manual .
    -    Editing of the reference manual
 ---pagebreak---                                           4
    -  Liaison with the national teams for trouble shooting support in case of
       difficulties and reporting to the programme management .
    –  Specifications of the characteristics of an industrial system . This work
       will be carried out in cooperation with industrial partners .
It is expected that by the end of the second phase the full complement of 14
staff will be reached ( in addition to the staff deployed by the Commission for
the project management ).
6 . IMPLEMENTATION OF THE BASIC SOFTWARE
    The basic software for Eurotra is an essential working and testing tool for
    the national teams called to implement and test the linguistic modules and
    dictionaries .
    For the third phase , two parallel operations are foreseen :
    –  software prototyping
       computer scientists and computational linguists in the central team and
       the national groups will continue their work on the functional
       improvements and extensions of the existing prototype software using
       mostly Prolog as a high-level tool for the production of " runnable
       specifications " ;
    -  " professional " implémentation
       since the methods and tools available today for fast software
       prototyping allow to verify the corrections and completeness of the
       specifications , but are too inefficient as a working tool for large
       scale linguistic experimentation , it is necessary to produce a
       functionally equivalent , but much more efficient version of the
       software . It is intended to give this task to an external contractor who
       has the necessary professional qualifications . The staff involved in the
       software prototyping in the Commission will be charged with the
       supervision and acceptance testing .
       Preparation for the selection of a suitable contractor has already
       started .
                                                                                 /I0G
 ---pagebreak---                                                       ANNEX nr
              CREATION OF A MACHINE TRANSLATION SYSTEM OF ADVANCED DESIGN
                                          ( EUROTRA )
                                  FINANCIAL STATEMENT " A "
 1     Budget article concerned :    Article 751 ( previously Item 7540 )
 2     Budget heading : Promotion and Development of Multilingual Actions
 3    Legal basis :    Article 235 of the EEC Treaty
                       Council Decision 82/ 752/EEC of 4 November 1982 O )
                       Council Decision 86/ 591 /EEC of 26 November 1986 ( 2 )
                       Proposal for a Council Decision on the transition to Phase
                       III of the Eurotra programme
4     Description , aims and justification
      4.1   Description
            Eurotra is a Research and Development programme aimed at creating a
            machine translation system of advanced design capable of handling all
            the official languages of the Community .
            The costs of the programme are shared .            The bulk of the work is
            carried out in specialist national research centres under contracts
            of association . The principal responsibility of each centre is the
            analysis and synthesis of its own language , and the transfer of other
            languages towards it .
      4.2   Aims
            On completion of the programme an operational prototype system should
            be available in a limited field and for limited categories of text ,
            which would provide the basis for a development on an industrial
            scale at a later stage .
      4.3   Justification
            The aim of the programme is the creation of tools capable of lowering
            the language barriers which are an obstacle to communications and
            trade within the Community and beyond its frontiers , while respecting
            the cultural requirement to preserve the wealth and variety of
            European languages .
( 1 ) OJ No L 317 of 13 . 11 . 1982 , p. 19
( 2 ) OJ No L 341 of 4 . 12 . 1986 , p. 39
                                                                                   /O'J
 ---pagebreak---                                          - 2 -
        In its Decision 86 / 591 / EEC of 26 November 1986 , extending the Eurotra
        programme to embrace Spain and Portugal , the Council laid down the
        transitional arrangements as follows ( Article 1 ( 1 ) ( b )):
        " At the end of each phase the Council , acting in accordance with the
        procedures laid down in the Treaty , shall decide , on the basis of a
        report from the Commission and the opinion of the Committee referred
       to in Article 3 ( CGC– 12 ), whether to move on to the next phase ."
       The proposal for a Decision now placed before the Council refers to
       the transition of the Eurotra programme to Phase III on 1 July 1988 .
5 Financial    implications  of the      transition to Phase III    of the   Eurotra
  programme
  The Council established the duration of Phase III of the programme at two
  years . The funds required for Phase III ( including the sum of 6.5 million
  ECU on which the Council is to take a separate , deferred decision ) are
  estimated by the Commission at 12 million ECU . The aim of the present
  proposal is therefore to obtain the 5.5 million ECU granted by the Council
  on 4 November 1982 ( 82 / 752 / EEC ).
  The overall costs of the third phase ( '000 ECU ) break down as follows ( the
  figures in brackets refer to the 5.5 million ECU which are the subject of
  the present proposal ):
  (a)  Community contributions to national teams           8 400   (A  000 )
  (b)  Basic software                                      1 600   (   500 )
  (c ) Linguistic specifications                             700   (   500 )
  (d ) Training workshops , equipment , etc.                 300   (   200 )
  (e)  Preparatory work for transfer to
       an industrial system                                1 000   (   300 )
                   Total                                 12 000  (5 500 )
  To this must be added 7 million ECU of national contributions , bringing
  the total cost of Phase III to 19 million ECU .
  Member States' contributions to the financing of work done by national
  teams are negotiated in the contracts of association and should                 in
  principle be maintained for Phase III .
  The following tables summarize the financing of the programme :
                                                                                     m
 ---pagebreak---                                              в *-
      Table 1
      Coat and duration of each phase :
       (• 000 ECU )
      Phase I ( two years )                            2 000
      Phase II ( three years )                        13 000
      Phase III ( two years )    5 500 + 6 500 =      12 000
             Total                                    27 000
      Table 2
      Financing of Phases I and II as commitment and payment appropriations in
      Budget years 1982 to 1988
      ( '000 ECU )
      Year           Commitments             Payments
      1982               1 000                    800
      1983               1 000                   800
      1984           token entry                  400
      1985              4  200                 1 500
      1986              3  950                2  650
      1987              3  500                4  500
      1988 *            1  350 **             4  350 #**
     Total             15 000                15 000
     Table 3
     Planned financing of Phase III , 1988-1990 ( '000 ECU ), Article 751 :
     Budgeted operating appropriations :
     Year           Commitments             Payments
     1988 *             3 150 #*              1 650 #**
     1989               2 350                 2 350
     1990                                     1 200
     1991                                        300
     Total              5 500                 5 -5QQ
     Budgeted research appropriations : nil
*    earmarked for Eurotra in       the preliminary     draft budget for 1988 under
     Article 751 ( multilingualism )
**   total commitment appropriations 4 500 000 ECU
*#■# total payment appropriations 6 000 000 ECU
                                                                                    4ol
 ---pagebreak---                                                           ANNEX 3T
               CREATION OF A MACHINE TRANSLATION SYSTEM OF ADVANCED DESIGN
                                             ( EUROTRA )
                                  FINANCIAL STATEMENT " B "
 1    Budget article concerned :       Article 738(9 ) ( 8.4 of the Framework Programme )
2     Legal basis
      Article 130 Q.2 of the EEC Treaty
     Council Decision 82 / 752 /EEC of 4 November 1982 O )
     Council Decision 86 /591 /EEC of 26 November 1986 ( 2 )
     Council Decision 87/516 /Euratom , EEC of 28 September 1987 ( 3 )
     Council     Decision     /    / EEC    of                     on  the transition  to
      Phase III of the Eurotra programme (^)
      Proposal for a Council Decision on the completion of a specific programme
     on a machine translation system of advanced design ( Eurotra )
3    Description , aims and justification
     3.1    Description
            Eurotra is a Research and Development programme aimed at creating a
            machine translation system of advanced design capable of handling all
            the official languages of the Community .
            The costs of the programme are shared . The bulk of the work is
            carried out in specialist national research centres under contracts
            of association . The principal responsibility of each centre is the
            analysis and synthesis of its own language , and the transfer of other
            languages towards it .
     3.2    Aims
            On completion of the programme an operational prototype system should
            be available in a limited field and for limited categories of text ,
            which would provide the basis for a development on an industrial
            scale at a later stage .
     3.3    Justification
            The aim of the programme is the creation of tools capable of lowering
            the language barriers which are an obstacle to communications and
            trade within the Community and beyond its frontiers , while respecting
            the cultural requirement to preserve the wealth and variety of
            European languages .
(1)  0J  No  L 317 of 13 . 11 . 1982 ,   p. 19
(2)  OJ  No  L 341 of 4 . 12 . 1986 ,    p. 39
(3 ) 0J  No  L 302 of 24 . 10 . 1987 ,  p.    1
(A)  OJ  No  L      of                   P·         – · –
 ---pagebreak---        A compromise was reached in the Coreper discussions which resulted in
       Decision 06 / 591 /EEC of 26 November 1986 , extending the Eurotra
       programme to embrace Spain and Portugal : of the 11 million ECU
       proposed by the Commission to finance the extension , Coreper proposed
       that 4.5 million ECU should be used for the second phase of the
       programme , and that the Council decision on the financing of the
       third phase ( 6.5 million ECU ) should be deferred .
       The proposal for a Decision now placed before the Council refers to
       additional finance for Phase III of the programme , a decision on
       which was deferred when the programme was extended to embrace Spain
       and Portugal .
Fi nancial     implications  of the   extension of   the  Eurotra   programme to
embrace Spain and Portugal in Phase III
The Council established the duration of Phase III of the programme at two
years . The funds required for Phase III (a decision on which was deferred
by the Council ) are estimated by the Commission at 12 million ECU , of
which 5.5 million ECU were approved by the Council in its Decision
82 / 752 / EEC of 4 November 1982 . The present proposal therefore relates to
the balance of 6.5 million ECU .
The overall costs of the third phase ( '000 ECU ) break down as follows ( the
figures in brackets refer to the 6.5 million ECU which are the subject of
the present proposal ):
(a)    Community contributions to national teams         8 400   (* 400 )
(b)    Basic software                                    1 600   (1 100 )
(c )   Linguistic specifications                            700  (  200 )
(d )   Training workshops , equipment , etc.                300  (  100 )
<e )   Preparatory work for transfer to
       an industrial system                              1 000   (  700 )
                   Total                               12 Q0Q   (6 5QQ )
To this must be added 7 million ECU of national contributions , bringing
the total cost of Phase III to 19 million ECU .
Member States' contributions to the financing of work done by national
teams are negotiated in the contracts of association and should in
principle be maintained for Phase III .
The following tables summarize the financing of the programme :
 ---pagebreak---                                          - 3 -
     Table 1
     Cost and duration of each phase :
     ( '000 ECU*)
     Phase I ( two years )                           2 000
     Phase II ( three years )                       13 000
     Phase III ( two years )   5 500 + 6 500 =      12 000
           Total                                   27 000
    Table 2
    Financing of Phases I and II as commitment and payment appropriations in
     Budget years 1982 to 1988
     ( '000 ECU )
    Year            Commitments             Payments
     1982               1 000                   800
     1983               1 000                   800
     1984           token entry                 400
    1985               4 200                  1 500
    1986               3 950                 2 650
    1987               3 500                 4 500
    1988 #             1 350 **              4 350 #**
    Total            15 000               15 000
    Table 3
    Planned financing of Phase III , 1988-1990 ( '000 ECU )
    Item 7389
    Budgeted research appropriations :
    Year            Commitments            Payments
    1988
    1989               4 650                 2 000
    1990               1 850                 2 800
    1991                                     1 400
    1992                                        300
    Total             6 500                6 500
    Budgeted operating appropriations :   ni 1
*   earmarked for Eurotra in the preliminary draft budget   for 1988   under
    Article 751 ( multilingualism )
** total commitment appropriations 4 500 000 ECU
*** total payment appropriations 6 000 000 "EGU
                                                                          Ml
 ---pagebreak---                                                                     ANNEX V
            Opinion of the Management and Coordination Advisory Committee
                   Linguistic Problems ( CGC-12 ) of 25 January 1988
Subject :    Transition of the EUROTRA R&D Programme to its third phase
The Committee has examined the proposal of the Commission on the transition of
the EUROTRA programme to its third phase .
The Committee takes note of the fact that the programme has been assessed by a
Panel of independent experts and that the proposal of the Commission has taken
its findings and recommendations fully into account .
The  recommendations    of  the  Committee based    on  its own evaluation  of the
current state of work on the programme have also been taken into account in
the proposal of the Commission .
The Committee is of the opinion that the conditions for an orderly transition
to the third phase will be met by mid-1988 .
The Committee stresses the importance of ensuring the continuity of the
programme and recommends that Council should reach its Decision on the
transition in time to allow the effective start-up of the third phase on 1
July 1988 .
The Committee confirms its opinion of 6 May 1986 that the Community budget
should be increased by 6.5 million ECU to a total of 12 million ECU with an
appropriate contribution from the Member States .
                                                                              M3
 ---pagebreak---                                        2
In the light of its assessment of the progress made so far , arid also in order
to facilitate the synchronization of the work on Spanish and Portuguese , the
Committee recommends a duration of up to two and a half years for the third
phase of the programme .
The Committee recommends that preparations for the industrial development of
EUROTRA should begin immediately .
                                                                          AA