The Language Grid: supporting intercultural collaboration

Abstract

A variety of language resources already exist online. Unfortunately, since many language resources have usage restrictions, it is virtually impossible for each user to negotiate with every language resource provider when combining several resources to achieve the intended purpose. To increase the accessibility and usability of language resources (dictionaries, parallel texts, part-of-speech taggers, machine translators, etc.), we proposed the Language Grid; it wraps existing language resources as atomic services and enables users to create new services by combining the atomic services, and reduces the negotiation costs related to intellectual property rights. Our slogan is "language services from language resources." We believe that modularization with recombination is the key to creating a full range of customized language environments for various user communities.