MLIF: A Metamodel to Represent and Exchange

Multilingual Textual InformationISO TC37 SC4 WG3 24616

Samuel Cruz-Lara, Gil Francopoulo, Laurent Romary, Nasredine Semmar

LREC 2010, 19 May 2010

OutlineScope of MLIFPurpose and Justification of MLIFDescription of MLIFUse CasesCurrent Status

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Scope of MLIF

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ScopeMLIF aims at proposing a specification platform to represent multilingual data within a large variety of applications such as translation memories, localization, computer-aided translation, multimedia or electronic document managementMLIF introduces a metamodel in combination with chosen data categories in order to allow the description of any specific domainMLIF provides a way to validate any instance of this metamodel, as well as, interoperability principles with numerous translation and localization standards

OutlineScope of MLIFPurpose and Justification of MLIFDescription of MLIFUse CasesCurrent Status

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Purpose and Justification

The evolution of Communication and Information Technologies and in particular natural language processing, makes acute the question of standardizationThe issues related to standardization are of an industrial, economic and cultural natureThe control of the interoperability between the existing industrial standards for localization (XLIFF), translation memory (TMX), … constitutes a major objective for a coherent and global management of multilingual dataMLIF could be associated to multimedia standards such as MPEG-4 [ISO/IEC 14496 ], MPEG-7 [ ISO/IEC 15938 ], and W3C SMIL, in order to handle multilingual data within several multimedia applications such as, interactive TV, video conferencing, subtitling, etcAll these formats work well in the specific field they are designed for, but they lack a synergy that would make them interoperable when using one type of information in a slightly different context

MLIF should be considered as a unified conceptual representation of multilingual and multimedia content

OutlineScope of MLIFPurpose and Justification of MLIFDescription of MLIFUse CasesCurrent Status

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Description of MLIFAs with “Terminological Markup Framework” TMF [ISO 16642] in terminology, MLIF introduces a metamodel in combination with chosen data categories [ ISO 12620 ]

These data categories will be derived as a subset of a Data Category Registry (DCR) in order to ensure interoperability between several multilingual applications and corpora

A Data Category Specification (DCS) will define, in combination with the metamodel, the various constraints that apply to a given domain-specific information structure or interchange format

MLIF describes elementary linguistic segments (i.e. sentence, syntactical component, word, …)

• MLDC (Multi Lingual Data Collection)

• GI (Global Information)

• HistoC (History Component)

• GroupC (Grouping Component)

• MultiC (Multilingual Component)

• MonoC (MonoLingual Component)

• SegC (Segmentation Component)

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MLIF Metamodel

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MLIF MetamodelMulti Lingual Data Collection (MLDC)

Represents a collection of data containing global information and several multilingual units

Global Information (GI)Represents technical and administrative information applying to the entire data collection. Example: title of the data collection, revision history, …

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MLIF MetamodelHistory Component (HistoC)

This generic component allows to trace modifications on the component it is anchored to (i.e. versioning)

Grouping Component (GroupC)Represents a sub-collection of multilingual data having a common origin or purpose within a given project

MLIF MetamodelMulti Lingual Component (MultiC)

This component represents a unique multilingual entryMono Lingual Component (MonoC)

Part of a multilingual component containing information related to one language

Segmentation Component (SegC)A recursive component allowing any level of segmentation for textual information

In order to provide a larger description of the linguistic content, the MLIF metamodel allows anchoring of other metamodels, such as MAF (morphological description), SynAF (syntactical annotation), TMF (terminological description), or any other metamodel based on ISO 12620

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Data Categories

• Domain• Project• Source• sourceType• sourceLanguage• class• duration• begin• next• xml:id• xml:lang• xlink…

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MLIF Metamodel

MLIF: a simple example

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OutlineScope of MLIFPurpose and Justification of MLIFDescription of MLIFUse CasesCurrent Status

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Use CasesInteroperabilityLinguistic PropertiesRelated StandardsMultimediaInteractive TV

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InteroperabilityTMX“the sentence contains different formatting information”

Interoperability

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TMX file

MLIF file

Linguistic Properties

Sentences, words, …

Time related issues

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Linguistic Properties

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TMX file produced by TRADOS

MLIF file produced by CEA LIST Sentence Aligner

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Related StandardsTEI (Text Encoding Initiative)

The description of all different XML elements has been done by using RelaxNG [ ISO 19757-2 ] with the help of ODD

W3C ITS (International Tag Set)ITS is a set of rules, expressed in elements, that provide information on how parts of a given DTD or XML Schema are related to specific internationalization & localization propertie

W3C SMILSMILtext

MLIF may be used to include pre-existant non-MLIF data like the ones that are produced by NLP tools

Multimedia

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Interactive TVTimed, Multilingual Textual DescriptionsTimed, Multilingual Textual Descriptions

W3C SMIL Standardization- Development of Interactive TV Profile- Integration of Annotation Support- Definition of Temporal Text Processing

ISO MLIF Standardization- Development of MLIF format- Development of a multilingual processing pipeline- Interaction with SMIL and MPEG standards

multilingual componentmultilingual component

multilingual DBmultilingual DB

linguistic segmentlinguistic segment

l’histoire du courage d’une femme pour l’histoire du courage d’une femme pour démasquer un mystèredémasquer un mystère

Monolingual componentMonolingual component

linguistic segmentlinguistic segment

la historia da la valentía de una mujer para la historia da la valentía de una mujer para desenmascarar undesenmascarar un misteriomisterio

Monolingual componentMonolingual component

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OutlineScope of MLIFPurpose and Justification of MLIFDescription of MLIFUse CasesCurrent Status

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Current StatusAWI (August 2006)CD (Mai 2009)DIS (February 2010)

Ongoing ballot process

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Thank you!Thank you for your attentionAny question?Mailing list

mlif@loria.frWeb site

http://mlif.loria.fr