Surrey academic takes part in the official launch of the World Language Documentation Centre
Friday 18 May 2007
On 9 May 2007, the World Language Documentation Centre (WLDC) was officially launched at the offices of UNESCO in Paris. WLDC is composed of world-renowned experts in language technologies, linguistics, terminology standardisation, and localisation, including Dr Lee Gillam of the University of Surrey’s Computing Department.
WLDC promotes multilingualism in 'cyberspace' and is putting systems in place for the maintenance and sustainability of the wealth of information about the languages of the world.
The launch of WLDC is due, in part, to a significant expansion to a series of international standards that are fundamental to a number of information systems, and the need to encapsulate a broad range of linguistic and technical expertise.
Developed countries may think of the Web as ubiquitous, but there is a distinct lack of content in a significant majority of the world's languages.
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) publishes the standards that result in identifiers, referred to by some as metadata, such as 'en' and 'fr' that, in computer systems and in web content, stand for 'English' and 'French'.
Some web search engines allow users to specialise their searches to pages that use these language identifiers, Accoona being one example.
Until this year, there were about 400 such identifiers in ISO standards; early in 2007 this number was expanded to over 7,500, and in 2008 this number is expected to expand way beyond 30,000.
The reason for this significant expansion is to allow for greater accuracy in identification of languages, in all their written, spoken and signed varieties.
Until now, ISO standards have only catered for a small proportion of languages, and a variety of studies have demonstrated the Web does not present a reliable surrogate for the use of languages in the world.
These new ISO standards provide for the ability to index and retrieve the potential content of a truly diverse and multilingual information society and for the future development of technologies with greater language-targeting features.
Significant steps towards community support and review for these activities are being undertaken through the OmegaWiki and OpenProgress initiatives.
Furthermore, discussions are already underway in relation to the so-called 'Multilingual Internet' - described by some as a major element of the Next Generation Internet.
UNESCO is widely expected to announce 2008 as International Year of Languages, with WLDC actively participating.