Quality Translation: Addressing the Next Barrier to Multilingual Communication on the Internet

As Europe has integration politically, languages are still one of the most pervasive barriers to interpersonal communication, cross-border commerce, and full participation in European democracy. Despite recent progress in machine translation, it is clear that the quality of today's Internet-based translation services is neither good enough for many tasks nor complete in terms of language coverage. Speakers of smaller languages thus find themselves largely excluded from vital discussions of European identity and policy. This talk will argue in favor of a concerted push in Europe for quality translation technology and address concrete preparatory actions performed by the EC-funded QT LaunchPad Project. It will discuss how these actions will directly influence the future of the Multilingual Web, both in Europe and around the world.