Contents

[New Language Resource] WordNet has been added to the Language Grid.

[Monthly Maintenance]

[Language Grid Users] Introduction of the Center for Multicultural Society Kyoto

New Language Resource

The new language resource, WordNet, has been added to the Language Grid. WordNet is a large-scale lexicon database. It is registered as a “concept dictionary” since it also shows concepts with a group of synonyms and the relations among the concepts.

Monthly Maintenance

Notice from the Language Grid Operator: The Language Grid will be suspended for maintenance on the first Monday of every month. The next maintenance will be carried out from 7:00 to 10:00 JST on September 1, Monday. If you wish to use the Language Grid during this period, please contact us in advance at operation [at] langrid.org in advance.

Language Grid Users: Center for Multicultural Society Kyoto

Aguri Shigeno, President

The Center for Multicultural Society Kyoto is a nonprofit organization. Our mission is to realize a multicultural society where people respect differences in nationality, language, culture, and gender. We have been dispatching medical translators to hospitals since 2003. With a growing number of foreign residents in Japan, the number of requests for medical translators is increasing. Last year, we sent translators for approximately 1,519 cases. However, due to constraints in budget and human resources, we had difficulty in meeting requests for cases such as the first visit of a new patient or during emergencies and in providing sufficient services 24 hours a day. To pursue solutions for this issue, we joined the Language Grid Project in 2005 and have been developing two systems called “M³ (The Computer-mediated Multilingual Medical Communication Support System) “and “TackPad“. M³ supports communications at the reception in hospitals, and “TackPad“ is a system that enables the voluntary and collaborative creation of dictionaries for medical translations by foreign patients, medical staffs, and interpreters. By joining the Language Grid Project, we were able to take a step forward in resolving the aforementioned problems. Meeting new people and joining the research activities in the project have broadened the possibilities of our activities.