Grup d'Investigació en Lingüística Computacional - Universitat de Barcelona

Project Summary

One of the main points in the building of the global information society is the increasing demand of commercial systems in the area of MT. Although the problem of MT has not been fully solved yet, systems based on well known technologies could offer good translation tools. The main point to focus on is the lack of robust MT systems to provide good linguistic and software performance and an easy integration with world wide operating systems.

TRADE is targeted at the Public Administration represented by the Italian Social Security & Pension's Administration (INPS) with main interest in the translation of Social Security reports and statistics for its communication to other countries. TRADE is also directed to software companies as CCS: a leading software engineering company in Spain with an increasing internationalisation effort, requiring MT systems for the marketing of some of its products to different European countries. TRADE is mainly oriented towards medium and large enterprises working at international environments.

The main sectors addressed are software companies and Social Security organizations. Nevertheless, other organizations such as publishing houses, translator agencies, might also benefit from the project results. The project focuses on implementing an MT system demonstrator, close to market needs, for English, Spanish and Italian languages. TRADE aims to reuse and extend EUROTRA technology, although it also considers some of the most interesting standards of contemporary linguistics to guarantee the treatment of real text. Furthermore, good performance and a standard Windows 'look&feel' are goals to be achieved by using some of the most up-to-date technologies.

A client-server model in Windows and XWindows systems using Object Oriented paradigms, together with relational Data Bases, and RPC strategy and TCP/IP communication protocol are major information technology bases used in the project. The system has been developed in C, C++, Visual Basic and Prolog languages and is installed in both the Italian Social Security Public Administration and in CCS for their daily working. From these scenarios a user validation and technical verification is being performed.

Progress and results

TRADE is a client-server translation application working on PCs or Sun stations. The translation process can be run for ASCII and WinWord 2.0 documents, keeping all source text attributes. The TRADE Desktop client is fully integrated on Windows and allows interaction with the File Manager and WinWord, its communication with the server is based on TCP/IP. The server provides equal functionality to the client and some useful development utilities as a Dictionary Editor.

The translation process is highly improved by extending EUROTRA technology and using backtracking; the desired robustness is integrated into the system through the incorporation of linguistically motivated safety nets. Finally, although not less important, multiple users can be connected from different PCs and translate several files concurrently due to the RPC strategy.

Deliverables include:

1. System Architecture and Design Specifications.
2. Development Environment.
3. User Guide and Validation Report.

Exploitation

A workshop was held in Barcelona (October-95) and the project was also shown in the international ESPOLINGUA conference to be held in Rome (October-95). During the demonstration, some ASCII and WinWord 2.0 files are translated, showing the whole process in both sites, server and client. Although the project results cover the expectations, an extension of the project should be made to industrialize the prototype for further commercialization. The main goals should be to enhance the translation performance and to accept new types of documents and languages as input for the translator; an extension of the domains could also improve the quality of the product and increase the potential market.

Consortium

More information on TRADE

Mr. Joan Manel Espejo
Resp. European Programmes (Technical Department)
Avda. Castell de Barberà 22-24
Barberà del Vallès
E-08210 Barcelona
Tel: +34-3-7181699
Fax: +34-3-7183451
Email: jme@ccs.es

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