Human Language Technology (HLT)
can play a vital role in enabling the emerging eBusiness market.
Forecasts show that technologies that enable 'radical' multilingual
support will form a crucial competitive response for the next
generation of eBusiness web sites.
This is the message that emerged
from a special session on Human Language Technologies, held at
the recent eBusiness and eWork conference (e-2001), which was
held in Venice, October 17-19. The conference session demonstrated
Human Language Technology in action in commercially oriented
settings, involving an applied research context and an existing
eBusiness application.
Given the multilingual nature
of the European market, it is very much in the interests of European
business competitiveness to ensure that a significant portion
of any eBusiness technology portfolio considers multilingual
Human Language Technology as baseline contribution to business
survival. There is no doubt that the capability to cost-effectively
operate web sites in several European languages will be a key
success factor in the future for those companies seeking to sell
products and services Europe wide.
The eBusiness and eWork events
are the conferences for RTD projects in Key Action II of the
IST Programme. Key Action II of the IST Programme is also the
primary sponsor of the eBusiness and eWork conference series.
Other sponsors of e-2001 were Telecom Italia, Canon and InfoCamere.
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