CELEX: 31990D0664
Language: en
Date: 1990-11-26 00:00:00
Title: 90/664/EEC: Council Decision of 26 November 1990 adopting a specific Programme concerning the preparation of the development of an operational EUROTRA system

No L 358/84                             Official Journal of the European Communities                               21 . 12. 90
                                                                II
                                          (Acts whose publication is not obligatory)
                                                        COUNCIL
                                                     COUNCIL DECISION
                                                      of 26 November 1990
                  adopting a specific programme concerning the preparation of the development
                                              of an operational Eurotra system
                                                           (90/664/EEC)
THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES,                            Whereas, by Decision 89/41 0/EEC f7), the Council
                                                                    adopted a specific programme for the completion of
                                                                    Eurotra ;
Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European
Economic Community, and in particular Article 1 30q (2)             Whereas, following the adoption of Decision 90/221 /
thereof,                                                            Euratom, EEC (8) concerning the third framework
                                                                    programme for Community activities in the field of
                                                                    research and technological development (1990 to 1994), it
Having regard to the proposal from the Commission ('),              is necessary to continue the implementation of the
                                                                    second framework programme ( 1987 to 1991 ), adopted by
                                                                    the Decision 87/51 6/Euratom, EEC (9), by means of
In cooperation with the European Parliament ^),                     specific programmes for which the latter makes provision
                                                                    as in the case of the activities on linguistic problems
                                                                    (Action Line 8.4), including the preparation of the deve­
Having regard to the opinion of the Economic and Social             lopment of an operational machine translation system ;
Committee (3),
                                                                    Whereas Decision 82/752/EEC provided that on comple­
                                                                    tion of the Eurotra programme an operational system
Whereas Article 130k of the Treaty provides that the                prototype should be available in a limited field and for
framework programme is to be implemented through                    limited categories of text and it included in the
specific programmes developed within each activity ;                programme of work for the third phase of the Eurotra
                                                                    programme the preparation of a proposal for the further
                                                                    development of the system ;
Whereas, by its Decision 82/752/EEC (4), as amended by
Decision 86/591 /EEC (*), the Council adopted a Commu­              Whereas this programme should lead to the development
nity research and development programme for a machine               of a high-level scientific prototype in the field of auto­
translation system of advanced design (Eurotra) ;                   matic translation ;
                                                                    Whereas significant progress has been achieved as a result
Whereas, by Decision 88/445/EEC (®), the Council
                                                                    of the Eurotra programme in the field of linguistic
                                                                    research and it has constituted a first step towards the
approved the transition of the Eurotra programme to its             development of a practical machine translation system, to
third phase ;                                                       the benefit of the nine official Community languages ;
(') OJ No C 7, 12. 1 . 1990, p. 7.                                  Whereas the programme is expected to make an impor­
(2) OJ No C 175, 16. 7. 1990, p. 129 and Decision of 24 October     tant contribution to the economic and social cohesion of
    1990 (not yet published in the Official Journal).
(3) OJ No C 168, 10. 7. 1990, p. 12.
(4) OJ No L 317, 13. 11 . 1982, p. 19 .                             0 OJ No L 200, 13. 7. 1989, p. 15.
0 OJ No L 341 , 4. 12. 1986, p. 39.                                 (■) OJ No L 117, 8. 5. 1990, p. 28.
(6) OJ No L 222, 12. 8. 1988, p. 1 .                                0 OJ No L 302, 24. 10. 1987, p. 1 .
 ---pagebreak--- 21 . 12. 90                            Official Journal of the European Communities                            No L 358 /85
the Community, and to reconcile the benefits of the              Committee shall deliver its opinion on the draft within a
linguistic and cultural plurality with the attainment of the     time limit which the Chairman may lay down according
internal market ;                                                to the urgency of the matter, if necessary by taking a vote.
Whereas additional efforts will have to be made by the            2. The opinion shall be recorded in the minutes ; in
Community, the Member States and European industry in             addition, each Member State shall have the right to ask to
order to reach this objective ;                                   have its position recorded in the minutes.
Whereas      the   Scientific   and    Technical    Research
                                                                  3.     The Commission shall take the utmost account of
Committee (Crest) has been consulted,                             the opinion delivered by the Committee. It shall inform
                                                                  the Committee of the manner in which its opinion has
HAS ADOPTED THIS DECISION :                                       been taken into account.
                          Article 1
                                                                                            Article 7
A specific research and technological development
programme for the European Economic Community                     The procedure laid down in Article 6 shall apply in parti­
                                                                  cular to :
concerning the preparation of the development of an
operational Eurotra system, as defined in Annex I, is             — the contents of the calls for proposals,
hereby adopted for a period of two years commencing on            — the assessment of the proposed projects and the esti­
26 November 1990 .
                                                                       mated amount of the Community's contribution to
                                                                       them,
                          Article 2
                                                                  — departures from the general rules governing Commu­
 1 . The funds estimated as necessary for the execution                nity participation set out in Annex II,
of the programme amount to ECU 10 million, including              — the participation in any project by non-Community
expenditure on five temporary staff.                                  organizations and enterprises referred to in Article 8,
2.    An indicative allocation of funds is set out in Annex       — any adjustment of the indicative allocation of funds
H.                                                                    set out in Annex II,
                                                                  — the measures to be undertaken to evaluate the
                          Article 3
                                                                       programme,
Detailed rules for the implementation of the programme            — the arrangements for the dissemination, protection
and the rates of the Community's financial participation              and exploitation of the results of research carried out
are set out in Annex II.                                              under the programme.
                          Article 4
                                                                                            Article 8
 I. During the first quarter of 1993, the Commission
shall conduct through a panel of independent experts an           1 . Where framework agreements for scientific and
evaluation of the results achieved and shall send the             technical cooperation between European third countries
panel's report and its comments on this subject to the            and the European Communities have been concluded,
European Parliament and the Council.                              organizations and enterprises established in those coun­
                                                                  tries may, on the basis of the criterion of mutual benefit,
2.    This report shall be established having regard to the       become partners in a project undertaken within this
objectives set out in Annex I and in accordance with              programme.
Article 2 (2) of Decision 87/51 6/Euratom, EEC.
                                                                  2. No contracting party based outside the Community
                          Article 5                               and participating as a partner in a project undertaken
 1 . The Commission shall be responsible for the execu­           under the programme may benefit from Community
tion of the programme. It shall be assisted by a                  financing for this programme. Such a contracting party
Committee of an advisory nature, hereinafter referred to          shall contribute to the general administrative costs.
as 'the Committee', composed of the representatives of
the Member States and chaired by the representative of                                      Article 9
the Commission .
                                                                  This Decision is addressed to the Member States.
2.    Contracts concluded by the Commission shall
govern the rights and obligations of each party including
the methods of disseminating, protecting and exploiting           Done at Brussels, 26 November 1990.
the research results.
                          Article 6                                                             For the Council
                                                                                                  The President
1.    The representative of the Commission shall submit
to the Committee a draft of the measures to be taken. The                                     C. DONAT CATTIN
 ---pagebreak--- No L 358 /86                              Official Journal of the European Communities                                        21 . 12. 90
                                                                ANNEX I
           1.       OBJECTIVES, EVALUATION AND CONTENT OF THE PROGRAMME
            1.1 .   Overall objectives
                    This programme constitutes the first step towards the development on an operational machine trans­
                    lation system of advanced design, capable of dealing with all official Community languages. The
                    specific objectives of the programme are :
                    (a) Creation of the conditions for the transition to an operational system
                        — implementation of a development, testing and research environment capable of supporting
                             large-scale systems,
                        — extension of the linguistic coverage and large-scale testing of the analysis and synthesis
                             modules for all languages covered by Eurotra,
                        — the definition of common methods for large-scale development for machine translation and
                             other applications involving natural language,
                         — experimentation and evaluation of relayed transfer, using an interface structure as pivot,
                         — research, prototype implementation and evaluation of new linguistic models aimed at the
                             improvement of the interlinguality of the interface structure and control of overgeneration,
                         — research, prototypical implementation and evaluation of methods for the use of subject-field
                             and text-type specific knowledge for translation and other applications ;
                    (b) advancement of work on lexicography and terminology
                         — definition of common methods and tools for the integration of existing lexical and terminolo­
                             gical collections,
                         — participation in the definition of international standards for textual, lexical and terminological
                             data,
                         — close cooperation with research bodies in the Member States with a view to harmonizing
                             lexical and terminological resources and to making existing systems compatible ;
                    (c) Training and cooperative projects
                         — training of researchers and engineers through a grant scheme,
                         — setting-up, experimentation and evaluation of cooperation schemes between research institutes
                             and industry.
            1 .2.    Evaluation
                    At the end of the programme the results will be evaluated by independent experts against these
                     objectives.
            2.       PRIORITY ACTION LINES AND SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL CONTENT
            2.1 .    System development, testing and research environment
                     On the basis of the critical review of the prototype implementations and the specifications to be
                     produced by the end of June 1990 the implementation of a system development, testing and research
                     environment will be commissioned to the European software industry on a turn-key basis.
                    This environment should have the following characteristics :
                  . — a powerful and user-friendly formalism for describing linguistic facts (to encode dictionaries and
                         grammars),
                     — a special-purpose data management system for the creation and maintenance of large-scale
                         dictionaries and grammars with special user services for the addition, inspection and modification
                         of the linguistic data,
                     — an efficient rule interpreter capable of dealing with large dictionaries, grammars and texts,
                     — a set of testing tools with special attention to interactive run-time testing and correction of
                         dictionaries and grammars.
                     The system development environment will pay special attention to modularity to ensure the
                     re-usability of the linguistic resources created through the possibility of combining the various
                     modules in different ways to fulfil special tasks and of interfacing them with external applications.
 ---pagebreak--- 21 . 12. 90                              Official Journal of the European Communities                                        No L 358/87
            2.2.    Language-specific research and development work
            2.2.1 . Review and extension of the existing implementations
                    For each of the nine languages covered, the analysis modules produced by the Eurotra programme
                    will be thoroughly reviewed to ensure their generality and adjusted to the features of the revised
                    formalism .
                    On the basis of these revised implementations the grammatical coverage will be gradually extended to
                    include additional text and discourse types. No large-scale lexical and terminological development
                    work is planned for this phase pending the outcome of the research on the re-usability of lexical and
                    terminological resources (see point 2.3).
            2.2.2. Relayed transfer
                    The research and experimentation are to determine the feasibility of this approach and the optimal
                    strategy for its implementation.
            2.3.    Linguistic research of general interest
                    This action line is intended to gradually improve the linguistic performance of the system and the
                    quality of translation. It will be organized along three main directions :
                    — general linguistic research to increase the interlinguality of the interface structure and to reduce
                        overgeneration,
                    — use of subject-field specific knowledge (terminologies, classification schemes, paradigmatic rela­
                        tions, domain models, knowledge bases, etc.),
                    — use of text and discourse type-specific constraints to reduce overgeneration.
                    It can be predicted that some progress will be made in the course of this programme, but additional
                    efforts must be foreseen for the future .
            2.4.    Research into advanced system architectures
                    To create a potential for innovation and keep pace with the fast advancement of hardware and soft­
                    ware technologies, continuous research into new formalisms, software and hardware architectures is to
                    be foreseen, which will lead in selected cases to experimentation and prototype implementation (e.g.
                    parallel system architectures).
            2.5.    Re-usability of lexical and terminological resources
                    The details of this action line will be defined through project definition studied to be carried out in
                    1990 .
                    It is expected to have two main components :
                    — development of methods and tools for the conversion of the formalized parts of existing diction­
                        aries which cover mostly orthographic, phonological, morphological and syntactic information,
                    — research into the utilization of non-formalized portions of dictionaries which concern mostly
                        subject classification, discourse types, definitions and examples or citations. This is an advanced
                        research topic whose outcome cannot be predicted now.
            2.6.    Standards for textual, lexical and terminological data
                    This activity is closely related to the re-usability of linguistic resources in the future. The Commission
                    will support and stimulate international activities in this field in close cooperation with professional
                    associations and national and international standards organizations.
            2.7.    Education and training
                    A number of research grants will be awarded to post-graduate students to participate in the research
                    and development work in the projects outlined hereabove.
 ---pagebreak--- No L 358/88                              Official Journal of the European Communities                                            21 . 12. 90
                                                                ANNEX II
          IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROGRAMME, RATES OF THE COMMUNITY'S FINANCIAL
                              PARTICIPATION AND INDICATIVE ALLOCATION OF FUNDS
           1.      MODALITIES OF EXECUTION
                   The various action lines pursue different objectives which demand different forms of organizational,
                   contractual and financial schemes.
                   The participants may be universities, research organizations and industrial companies, including small
                   and medium-sized enterprises, individuals, or any combination thereof established in the Community.
           1 . 1 . Service contracts
                   The implementation of the system development, testing and research environment (action line 2.1 )
                   which will provide all participating parties with a common set of tools, will be entrusted to industrial
                   contractors on the basis of calls for tenders. It will be financed fully from the Community budget.
           1.2 National research teams
                   The work concerning the different languages (action line 2.2) will be carried out by national research
                   teams in the Member States, and cofinanced by the Community and the Member States.
           1.3 Shared cost projects
                   The linguistic research of general interest (action line 2.3), research and development into advanced
                   system architectures (action line 2.4) and re-usability of lexical and terminological resources (action line
                   2.5) will be carried out as cooperative ventures between industries, research centres and Eurotra teams.
                   Shared-cost research projects should as a general rule be carried out by independent participants from
                   at least two Member States .
                   The contracts for shared-cost research projects shall, as a general rule, be awarded following a selection
                   procedure based on calls for proposals published in the Official Journal of the European
                   Communities.
                   For shared-cost contracts, the Community participation will as a general rule be up to 50 % of the total
                   expenditure, but this percentage may be varied according to the nature and the stage of development of
                   the research. Alternatively, universities and research institutes may, for each project they carry out
                   under this programme, opt either for 50 % funding of total expenditure or 100 % funding of the addi­
                   tional marginal costs.
           1 .4. Grants
                   Grants will be awarded to qualified post-graduate students.
           1 .5. Subsidies
                   The Commission will award subsidies to professional associations and standards organizations for action
                   line 2.6.
           2.      INDICATIVE ALLOCATION OF FUNDS
                   The indicative breakdown of the amount of ECU 10 million deemed necessary for the execution of the
                   programme is as follows (in thousands of ecus):
                   (a) System development environment                                                                    2 000
                   (b) Community contribution to the national research terms                                             4 000
                   (c) Shared-cost research projects                                                                     3 000
                   (d) Training, subsidies, evaluation                                                                   1 000
                                                                                                              Total     10 000 .