Contents

[Yakushite.Net and Japanese WordNet are now Available!]

[Teaming up with Google: Google Translate now Available on Language Grid]

[Kodensha's J-Server ASP Service Launched]

[Langrid ToolBox: Easy Multilingual Collaboration Tools on the Internet]
(Revised on August 26: Release Schedule has been changed.)

[Monthly Maintenance for August]

[Language Grid Users] Watanabe Laboratory of Nagoya University

Yakushite.Net and Japanese WordNet are now Available!

  The following new language resources are now available on the Language Grid. The information is arranged by resource, supported languages, and provider.
 
Yakushite.Net (Chinese->Japanese, English<->Japanese)/OKI Electric Industry Co., Ltd.
Yakushite.Net is a community-driven translation site where users create and manage dictionaries for each field of interest, thus, improving translation quality. We plan to modify this service by allowing registration of dictionaries on the Language Grid, making it better than conventional translation service that is combined with dictionaries and simply replace registered words.
 
Japanese WordNet (Japanese, English)/Language Infrastructure Group, NICT
Japanese WordNet is a concept dictionary made with an automatic translation system that is based on Princeton WordNet.

Teaming up with Google: Google Translate now Available on Language Grid

  Google Inc. has joined the Language Grid! The well-known translation tool, Google Translate, is now available on the Language Grid. The most remarkable feature of Google Translate is the wide variety of languages--42 languages--including Arabic and Russian, which were not available on the Language Grid before. Translation of the many languages is made possible through the method of statistical machine translation, whereby a large amount of data in the form of human-translated texts are fed into computers so that they can then translate other texts based on statistical probability.
  In the near future, the user's translation request will be allocated to the Google server nearest to the user's part of the world, which is expected to improve translation speed.
  Before using, please read and follow the license conditions in the resource profile. We hope it will be widely used by Language Grid users for their international exchange, promotion of multicultural society, and research.

Kodensha's J-Server ASP Service Launched

Kodensha's J-Server ASP service, a "members only" resource for paying subscribers, has been launched on the Language Grid. For details, please visit the pages below. To subscribe, please check the information under "How to get a Membership".
  J-Server ASP Service (Japanese <-> English)
  J-Server ASP Service (Japanese <-> Chinese (Simplified))
  J-Server ASP Service (Japanese <-> Chinese (Traditional))
  J-Server ASP Service (Japanese <-> Korean)

Langrid ToolBox: Easy Multilingual Collaboration Tools on the Internet

  NICT Language Grid Project will release a series of multilingual collaboration tools called collectively as the Langrid ToolBox, which can be accessed easily by anyone through a website. The first release will be at the end of AugustSeptember. These tools will also be released as open source, and can be used through a web browser as well as by downloading the package and customizing the design.

 
Document Translation:
A tool for multilingual document translation. With back-translation functions, you can retranslate the output into the source language and check whether it has been translated correctly. This tool also allows you to keep the original layout of the source document.
 
Multilingual BBS:
The posts to this bulletin board system are translated into multiple languages. Users can modify and improve translations.
 
User Dictionary:
This is a user dictionary creation tool where the user dictionary is to be combined with a machine translator. You can create an original dictionary by adding special words from your community.
 
Multilingual Chat: (to be released at the end of NovemberDecember)
Users can easily participate in multilingual chats in their own native languages.
 
Web Translation: (to be released at the end of October)
This tool translates websites with specified URLs into various languages. Users can modify the translation and share the modified site.
 

Monthly Maintenance for August

  The next maintenance of the Language Grid will be conducted on Monday, August 3, 18:00 -21:00 JST. If you wish to use the Language Grid during this period, please contact us in advance at operation [at] langrid.org.
 

 

Language Grid Users: Watanabe Laboratory of Nagoya University

  At Nagoya University's Watanabe Laboratory, we study society from two aspects,--human and environment--and conduct research with the aim of developing and applying information and communication technologies that contribute to society from the following three viewpoints:

 
- Human (designing a place that supports teaching, learning and creative activity in a virtual space)
- Human and environment (traffic simulation, modeling of community activities in the real world)
- Environment (knowledge discovery from time-series data and safe driving support using sensor data)
 
  As part of supporting creative activity, we study the themes of design and reuse of presentation materials. We have developed a scenario drawing tool to support the process of writing the script for and designing how to proceed with a presentation.   We are currently using the Language Grid to make English slides for international conferences. We translate the Japanese slides into English with a machine translator. However, to obtain appropriate English translations for slides, we need to prepare beforehand: select appropriate paraphrasing and dictionaries, and combine them with the machine translator. We cannot do this without the Language Grid. We presented our study on this topic at a research conference of IEICE in February 2009.