Language processing gets better than ever
Effective translation of text from one European language to another, taking into consideration complex nuances and intricacies, is important to enhance communication on many levels across the continent. Natural language processing (NLP) technology is playing an important role in facilitating this ability through high-tech means. The EU-funded project 'Analyzing and recognizing time, factuality, and opinion in text' (ARTIFACTO) furthered this vision and tested it on translation between Catalan and Spanish. The project worked on developing technology for the processing of three semantic domains: time, event factuality and opinion information in natural language text. These three conceptual systems are ideal for examining the cross-linguistic porting of NLP technology. ARTIFACTO defined description models for these systems as expressed in Catalan and Spanish that contribute to defining cross-lingual standards. More specifically, the ARTIFACTO system represents software that effectively recognises events, sorts them by time, and identifies the different degrees of factuality and opinions. These achievements helped the project members enhance information extraction systems and furthered research on related topics. The work done supports the design of adequate cross-lingual descriptive models for NLP applications, linking equivalent corpus resources and expanding NLP technology to other languages. Such technology will contribute to enhancing communication in Europe among different communities, improving access of information to citizens. In the long run, the EU can become a pioneer in this important field, helping to bridge understanding between cultures and foster knowledge exchange around the globe.
Keywords
Translation, factuality, opinion, natural language processing, cross-linguistic porting, corpus resources
