About the Language Grid

In 2006, several research groups including NICT, universities, and NTT started developing a language infrastructure on the Internet called the Language Grid. This project is based on collaboration between industry, government, universities, and citizens.

It offers two main benefits. One is the ability to combine language resources (ex. bilingual dictionaries) or language processing functions (ex. machine translators), and the other is the ability to add own language resources to create new language services for their own intercultural activities.

The Language Grid is an infrastructure that is built on the top of the Internet. It allows a better understanding of Internet contents written in different languages and by people from different countries. In addition, the Language Grid allows users to easily develop new language services by combining existing ones to satisfy their needs. Research and development is conducted in Language Grid Project at NICT during April 2006 - March 2011, and in Kyoto University after April 2011.

The Language Grid Operation Center coordinates the trial usage of the Language Grid for 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.

The Language Grid Association is a loosely coupled organization formed by collaboration among industry, government, academia, and citizens. Our goal is to advance the technology and application of the Language Grid. This organization consists of various SIGs (Special Interest Groups) such as research groups or projects, whose aim is to accumulate use cases and best practices.

Basic software for the Language Grid has been studied and developed at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT). For trial operation, however, Department of Social Informatics, Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University takes on the role as the Language Grid Operator. During this trial, the usage of the Language Grid is limited to non-profit activities.

Language Grid Service Manager is a web-based tool to manage the Language Grid for the Language Grid Users and the Operator. This tool allows easy management of user information, user access, language/computer resources and language services. Each role in the Language Grid has different range of control.

Language services used in Services Computing School are managed by Service Manager. Users of Services Computing School can access the language services in Language Grid Service Manager by your temporary ID and password.

Language Grid Playground provides an easy access to the Language Grid, and it allows anyone to try out various language resources and language services using a web browser.