Language technologies and technical communication opportunities in FP5

The diversity of languages is one of the main barriers to international trade and a cause of relative isolation for parts of the population. Retaining and supporting this diversity is a determining factor for social and political cohesion within the European Union. European support in the field of language engineering will help to realise and exploit fully the potential of language technologies (LT). Core infocycle tools include: terminology management, for control over use of language at all stages of the infocycle; authoring and author memory, introducing discipline into the creation of information, and reducing redundant re-authoring; translation memory, for near-complete leveraging of existing multilingual material; machine translation, for fully automated translation-possible as a result of using other core tools. Tools which are co-ordinated with these core technologies to implement the infocycle include: document/Web repositories, for versioning and multilingual alignment of information elements; document management to control the use of information elements; multi-platform publishing tools to generate information for different delivery platforms, formats, audiences, environments; information retrieval engines to improve accessibility of digital information; and comprehension aids to assist in multilingual access.