Commission seeks innovation in 'mature' speech and language technology market
The Commission has called for innovation in order to maintain growth in the speech and language technology sector, which some say has reached market maturity in Europe. Addressing delegates at the LangTech 2002 conference in Berlin, Giovanni Varile, from the intelligent interfaces and surfaces unit of the Commission's IST (information society technologies) programme, outlined plans for a knowledge society built on user-focussed interfaces. 'The development of semantic-based and context aware knowledge systems together with natural and adaptive multimodal interfaces are key EC objectives. 'We are exploring beyond the conventional PC, screen and keyboard,' said Mr. Varile. Driven by the forces of globalisation, digitalisation, and the proliferation of portable communication devices, the integration of language processing technologies into society is widely seen as inevitable. Such a development could prove to be particularly relevant in an area as linguistically diverse as Europe. But in order to take the next step in the process, a different approach is needed. Current interfaces are too clumsy, and computers must begin to adapt to the user, rather than the other way round, which is currently the norm for such technologies. Industry representatives speaking at the forum highlighted their concerns at the lack of successful generic solutions in language technologies, with products usually having to be customised to users needs. Several groups also called for more EU support for translation technology efforts. At the end of the conference, Joseph Mariani, Director of the ICT Department of the French Ministry of Research and New Technologies, announced that LangTech 2003 would be held in Paris next autumn.