Denmark in Europe: Benchmarking HLT Research & Development

EUROMAP National Seminar - Copenhagen30 April 2003

Rose LockwoodDirector of Research, Bowne Global Solutions

2

The EUROMAP Final Report: Benchmarking HLT Progress

COVERING:

• State-of-the-Art in HLT• The Shape and Evolution of the Market• Driving Next-Generation HLT: Policy Imperatives• The HLT Scorecard

– HLT Benchmark

– HLT Opportunity Index

• Conclusions & Recommendations

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State-of-the-Art in HLT

• What is HLT and who are the companies making it happen?

• Segmentation of the technologies• Introduction to applications and opportunities for

technology transfer• Review of types of HLT players in Europe• Snap-shot profiles illustrative of the rich HLT

scene in Europe• Comprehensive directory of European researchers

and suppliers (to be published separately)– Showing focus and types of applications

– Languages covered by tools and products

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Multimodal, Multilingual Products & Services

componentwareSPEECH NLP

Interface & Interaction Knowledge Processing

X-Lingual Applications

From components to complex solutions: the focus of HLT applications

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Grounded in the basics: suppliers of Componentware and Resources

• Neurosoft (Greece) – Greek language components for text mining

• Polderland Language & Speech Technology (Netherlands) - Core components for multiple languages

• Connexor (Finland) – Embedded multilingual language analysers

• Daedalus (Spain) - Document processing tools for Castilian

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Innovators - Interface and Interaction

• Telisma (France) – Speech recognition for telecommunications voice services

• Auralog (France) Speech technology for the language learning industry

• Sympalog (Germany) – State-of-the-art voice dialog systems

• Loquendo (Italy): A global speech technology powerhouse

• Rhetorical Systems (UK) - High quality speech synthesis in multiple languages

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Innovators in Cross-Lingual Applications

• ESTeam (Sweden) - Resource-driven translation automation

• Sail Labs Technology (Austria) - An advanced language understanding agenda

• Synthema (Italy) – Tools for multilingual knowledge management

• Systran (France) – Industrial-strength machine translation

• Aixplain (Germany) – Cross-lingual solutions for speech and text

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Innovators in HLT-based Knowledge Processing

• Ankiro (Denmark) – User-centric dialogue and knowledge robots

• Language & Computing (Belgium) - Semantics for medical knowledge

• Xtramind Technologies (Germany) – Intelligent enterprise information processing

• Knowledge Concepts (Netherlands) - Boosting cross-lingual access to corporate content

• Wordmap (UK) – Enterprise Taxonomy Management Systems

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Ankiro - Products based on (English) language tools and databases

• Advanced products that promote effective communication, information searching and knowledge management.

• Dialog robots used for:– Guidance (e.g. as guides on web sites)– Support (e.g. as Call centre robots and FAQ robots)– Entertainment (e.g. chat robots)

• Search engines and crawlers include:– Web search engines (available both as index based search and as full-

text search)– Site search engines (searches on a company's web page) – Intranet search engines (searches through all of a company's

databases) – Lotus search engines (plug-ins for effective searches in Lotus

applications)

10Original Chart Source: Geoffrey Moore, The Chasm Group

components

niche products

embedded solutions

Market Take-up

Crossing the Chasm with Language Technology

2nd Generation LangTech:Advanced Solutions

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0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

1600

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

Rev

enue

s ($

m)

-10%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

Yea

r on

yea

r gr

owth

(%

)

Total revenues

Year on year growth

CAGR 21%

Source: Datamonitor, Voice Business Quarterly Update (Q3 2002)

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

Source: Steve McClure, IDC (2002)

speech

language

TOTAL HLT product market circa $2B in 2004

Market Forecast: Speech and Language Applications

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Policy - Background and Evolution

• How important is HLT from a policy perspective?• How has public investment supported the

domain, and • Who are the Showcase Labs?• How has public-sector investment in HLT evolved

over the years? • National and EU programme timelines

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niche products

components

basic research

embedded solutions

2002Funding for 1st Generation LangTech

1982 1990 1995 2000

Programme Support and HLT Transfer to Market

New tech-transfer cycle based on advanced HLT Research

Advanced LangTech

FP6 and new national, regional programmes2003

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HLT Research

New Business Formation

Access to Key Channels

Supply-side Readiness

ICT InfrastructureHLT Language

Breadth

InnovationPotential

RTDEnvironment

Trade Competitiveness

TechnologyTechnologyDevelopmentDevelopment

Demand-sideDemand-sideFactorsFactors

Supply-sideSupply-sideFactorsFactors

Are we ready for the next generation?Benchmarking HLT in Europe

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Benchmarking Method

• Measuring HLT maturity:– Factors include research and tech-transfer record, rates-of-

investment (at national level, both public and private), breadth of language coverage

• Measuring HLT opportunity:– Factors include infrastructure and business environment

• Combining data from varied sources to establish a useful benchmarking scale– HCID/World Economic Forum survey - uses a 1-to-7 rating scale

(1=poor, 7=excellent) for a wide range of questions

– Other studies normalised to this scale (Innovation Scorecard, EITO ICT infrastructure data, EuroStat, OECD, EUROMAP HLT maturity, etc.)

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How to measure HLT maturity

• Expert opinion/knowledge of the research scene• Review of activities, actors, players:

– suppliers

– projects

– researchers

• Review of quasi-quantitative measures including– projects-per-country (based on hltcentral database and other

sources for pre-FP4/5 programmes)

– experts/individuals with HLT focus per country (based on CDB and ELSNET contacts list)

– “citations” per country - from proceedings of major HLT conferences (EACL, ACL, COLING, MT Summit, Applied ACL, TMI, CLAW, Eurospeech, ICSLP, LREC)

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Consolidated Results: HLT Benchmark + Opportunity = HLT Scorecard

3 .1

4 .7

6 .3

2 .5 4 .0 5 .5

HLT Benchmark

HL

T O

pp

ort

un

ity

GermanyNetherlands

FinlandUK

Sweden

Ireland DenmarkFrance

Belgium

Spain

LEADERSPROMISING

READYFOR

TAKE-OFF

EU-14

Greece

Austria

Italy

Portugal

STRUCTURAL LIMITS

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Key Findings: Denmark

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

HLT re

sear

ch

RTD env

ironm

ent

Lang

uage

bre

adth

New b

usine

ss fo

rmat

ion

Acces

s to

chan

nels

Supply

-side

read

iness

Trade

com

petiti

vene

ss

ICT in

frastr

uctu

re

Inno

vatio

n po

tent

ial

HLT S

CORECARD

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Key Findings: Denmark vs EU average

0

1

2

3

4

5

6HLT research

RTD environment

Language breadth

New business formation

Access to channels

Supply-side readiness

Trade competitiveness

ICT infrastructure

Innovation potential

HLT SCORECARD

EU-14 Denmark

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HLT Indexes: Denmark

-

1.0

2.0

3.0

4.0

5.0

6.0

7.0

Speech Text/NLP Public Sector Industry Multilingual Minority

HLT RTD &Tech Transfer

HLT RTDInvestment

HLT LanguageBreadth

EU Average

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Scorecard: Comparing Denmark to EU Leaders

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

HLT re

sear

ch

RTD env

ironm

ent

Lang

uage

brea

dth

New b

usine

ss fo

rmat

ion

Acces

s to

chan

nels

Supply

-side

read

iness

Trade

com

petiti

vene

ss

ICT in

frastr

uctu

re

Inno

vatio

n po

tent

ial

HLT S

CORECARD

Germany Netherlands Finland UK Denmark

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Denmark: Key Findings

• Denmark scores to the EU average on measures of robustness in HLT research

• Strong tradition of text and NLP applications, and speech research is well represented.

• Active professional translation community, including a dedicated machine translation system for processing patent documents between English and Danish.

• Five major HLT research centres, one of which acts as a national centre of excellence for language technology.

• Denmark has about seven HLT suppliers, though not all of them are dedicated language-technology focused companies

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Denmark: Strengths

• Traditionally export-focused country with strong multilingual capabilities

• Excellent cross-border facilitator• Well-trained R&D base in language and speech

technology• Strong EU project participation, and a leading

role in regional Nordic language technology activities

• Healthy business innovation environment and excellent levels of public infrastructure readiness

• Basic technology components for Danish now exist, and research is carried out on other languages.

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Denmark: Challenges

• Ensuring that the Danish language community can benefit from speech and language technologies appropriate to Denmark’s high degree of readiness

• Industry involvement in HLT research is scarce, tech-transfer weak– Lack of large-scale high technology channels that can facilitate the

transfer of language and speech technologies to market

• Small local market opportunity– While 95% of the population are Danish speaking, the language is

highly localised, and not used widely elsewhere

• The transfer of first generation language technology to the marketplace is still in waiting mode

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Guide to Action

3 .1

4 .7

6 .3

2 .5 4 .0 5 .5

HLT Benchmark

HL

T O

pp

ort

un

ity

EU-14HLT lagging due to constraints of the

environment and under-investment in R&D

Infrastructure, investment and national policy

support urgently needed

Strong correlation Strong correlation between Opportunity between Opportunity and HLT Benchmarkand HLT Benchmark

Strong exploitation potential: tech-

transfer support key

World-Class knowledge-based products and services

DE/NE/FI/UK

IE/IT/AT

FR/BE/ES

GR/PT

Role for stronger HLT RTD and tech-transfer to match

opportunities

Boosting HLT research will pay off due to market

potential

SV/DK

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General Recommendations

EU-level• Collaboration at national level: HLT in the ERA• Structures for visioneering• Digital Infrastructure for HLT

– “Infrastructure Funds” for language technology

Danish national level• Need for a continued focus on cross-border

collaboration to ensure the future vitality of the Danish HLT community– within the Nordic Region, and in the wider European context.

• Greater effort at transfer opportunities– high Internet penetration and networked educational system– e-government, education and training may provide new opportunities for

exploiting language technology in an inherently small market.

Thanks!

Rose LockwoodDirector of Research, Bowne Global Solutions

Cambridge+44 1223 350 340

rose.lockwood@equipe.co.uk