With the creation of the new Language Technologies Research Centre (LTRC) in Gatineau (Quebec), many language technology experts are now able to collaborate under the same roof. The Centre will include researchers from the Interactive Language Technologies group at the National Research Council (NRC), professors and students from the departments of language studies, computer science and engineering from the Université du Québec en Outaouais, and professional technolinguists from the Translation Bureau's Technolinguistic Services. The Centre and its projects will therefore profit from experts with a wide range of related and complementary knowledge and abilities.

The LTRC hopes to make itself stand out by adopting a unique concept based on close collaboration between language and technology professionals, with the goal of improving existing products-or even creating new technological solutions to language problems.

The LTRC's main areas of focus are:

• tools for increasing productivity;
• multilingual content management and semantic search tools; and
• terminology and quality standards, and standardization of linguistic databases.

Tools for increasing productivity

HELP THE CANADIAN LANGUAGE INDUSTRY

Owing to its tradition of institutional bilingualism, Canada has earned a solid reputation in translation and terminology. This reputation has crossed borders and enabled Canada to attain an enviable international standing. However, because of the market's constant growth and the ever-increasing amounts of information, the industry can't keep up: the number of new translation graduates is not high enough to meet the demand.

In today's world, technology has become essential for translators. The advantages and the importance of technology for improving productivity are becoming increasingly apparent.

The Canadian language industry's research and commercialization capacity is limited compared to that of the larger American and European companies. The knowledge brought by experts, students and professionals to LTRC will make the creation of new tools possible, which will enable Canada to confidently enter the era of technolinguistic tools.

CREATE INTERNATIONALLY RECOGNIZED SUPPORT TOOLS

Although existing tools may be of high quality, they do have certain limitations and shortcomings. LTRC research will complement what is being done in the business sector and in university research centres. The Centre aims to develop tools for increasing productivity that could be applied in translation, in the creation of multilingual and multicultural content, and in language training, by involving language professionals in the research process-an absolutely innovative approach!

Multilingual content management and semantic search tools

Since the advent of the Internet, the amount of available information has been growing at an extraordinary rate, and the proportion of textual content in different languages is ever increasing.

Consequently, it is becoming increasingly important to find a solution to linguistic and cultural roadblocks that hinder communication and limit access to many resources. It is essential to create a new generation of tools to filter and catalogue content, regardless of the language used, for translation and accessibility purposes.

The Centre aims to develop tools that would manage multilingual and multicultural content. These tools will facilitate automatic text indexing and extraction, as well as searching for documents.

Terminology and quality standards, and standardization of linguistic databases

Increasing productivity is indeed an important factor. However, for a project to be successful, its delivered product must also be of high quality. For this reason, quality evaluation and the creation of standards for linguistic products are important issues.

With the goal of creating multilingual and multicultural solutions that are easily adaptable to target uses and audiences, attention must be placed foremost on uniformity, interoperability, and simplicity. This objective is conditional upon strict standardization of the components of a solution, namely procedures, production techniques, content organization, and data presentation.

LTRC aims to become an important player in the field of standardization, focusing primarily on three key aspects: standardizing terminology, defining quality standards, and establishing standards for linguistic databases.