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This Web Site is for trial use of the Language Grid limited to non-profit activities. For trial operation, Department of Social Informatics, Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University takes on the role as the Language Grid Operator.

Language Grid is a project to unite Language Resource Providers, Computation Resource Providers, and Language Service Users by applying Web service technology. The Language Grid Operator’s responsibility is to manage the Language Grid for non-profit use to support and enhance:

• Activities of NPOs and NGOs for intercultural collaboration.
• Multi-lingual communication among native and foreign people, particularly in local communities and at schools.
• Research on multi-lingual communication and/or intercultural collaboration, carried out at universities and research institutions.

In order to meet these objectives, we need to ask many organizations and individuals to provide their own language resources. However, intellectual property rights involve several complicated issues. Although every potential Language Resource Provider has its own unique circumstances, the situation could be generally described as below.

• Machine translators are often developed by for-profit companies, and cannot be provided without charge. However, if the application area of the Language Grid does not conflict with an already existing market, we can collaborate with companies and get a substantial discount on prices.
• Morphological analyzers and other language processing tools are often developed by research institutes or universities. In many cases, research institutes can provide their resources without any charge, if their application can be restricted to non-profit use. For-profit use, however, may require, on a case by case basis, contracts and fees.
• Multi-lingual dictionaries and multi-lingual parallel texts may or may not be free. Even for non-profit use, there are barriers to the distribution of those resources without charge, if the resources are already being sold. Since we are using Web services, however, there is a chance to make those resources available in the Language Grid by setting an upper limit to daily accesses.
• However, most language resource providers are willing to disseminate the fruit of their research　and development. They hope that their resources will be widely used and contribute to international society.

The Language Grid is based on Web service technologies that enable us to freely combine software distributed via the Internet. What Language Grid offers is, however, not only composite Web services but an infrastructure where stakeholders can provide and/or use language resources by mutual consent, with understanding and resolution of the intellectual property issue in each case. NICT Language Grid Project has made a lot of effort to develop the infrastructure. Kyoto University is in charge of its pilot operation, and will assess the effectiveness of the Language Grid by supporting intercultural collaboration conducted by Language Grid Users.

Below we provide answers to typical questions about the Language Grid and its operation.

According to “Agreement on the Language Grid,” the Operator shall provide the language resources solely for non-profit use, and the user may use them through the Language Grid solely for non-profit use. Furthermore, Kyoto University, the Operator, concludes Agreements solely with trustable organizations or individuals, those that can contribute to education and research activities. However, we cannot ignore the risk of leakage of IDs and passwords. To prevent this, the Operator monitors the Language Grid continuously using Language Grid Service Manager. Upon detecting resource abuse, the Operator will control access to stop providing the language resources to the offending party.

According to the Agreement, non-profit use of the Language Grid includes personal use. This is because individuals may provide language resources. However, Kyoto University as a Language Grid Operator will conclude Agreements only with trustable individuals. As a result, you do not have to worry about the general public having access to and using the Language Grid.

For-profit organizations can use the Language Grid only for social contribution activities, and cannot use it in their research labs. This is because language resource providers sometimes charge the research labs of for-profit companies for the use of their resources. We need to avoid conflicts between existing businesses and the Language Grid, which is intended to explore new applications of language resources.

The operation model of Kyoto University prevents companies from using the Language Grid for commercial purposes. This does place limits on the propagation of the Language Grid. The operation model of Kyoto University is tentative and was mainly intended to promote the research and development of technologies with field workers. In the future, we will need a for-profit operation model, so that companies can operate the Language Grid, and can provide less expensive and high quality services for anyone just as Internet providers do.

There is no chance that Kyoto University, a national university, will start for-profit operation of the Language Grid.