CELEX: 51990PC0296
Language: en
Date: 1990-07-17
Title: AMENDED PROPOSAL FOR A COUNCIL DECISION ADOPTING A SPECIFIC PROGRAMME CONCERNING THE PREPARATION OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN OPERATIONAL - EUROTRA SYSTEM

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