Activities of Algirdas SAUDARGAS related to 2018/2028(INI)
Plenary speeches (1)
Language equality in the digital age (short presentation) LT
Shadow reports (1)
REPORT on language equality in the digital age PDF (348 KB) DOC (74 KB)
Shadow opinions (1)
OPINION on language equality in the digital age
Amendments (35)
Amendment 2 #
Draft opinion
Recital A
Recital A
A. whereas the European Union has 24 official languages and more than 60 national and, regional as well as migrants’ languages;
Amendment 4 #
Draft opinion
Recital B
Recital B
B. whereas more than 20 European languages are in danger of digital language extinction; whereas Language Technologies (LTs) mplay serve as a tool foran essential role in protecting and promoting linguistic diversity, especially for smaller and non- official languages;
Amendment 6 #
Motion for a resolution
Citation 15 a (new)
Citation 15 a (new)
- having regard to the European Parliament's STOA study of March 2017 entitled ‘Language equality in the digital age - Towards a Human Language Project’,
Amendment 9 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A
Recital A
A. whereas lthe development of Language tTechnologies covers many research groupareas and disciplines including natural lComputational Linguistics, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science and Linguistics (with applications such as, among others, Natural Language pProcessing, sText Analytics, Speech tTechnology, information extraction, and machine translationData Mining);
Amendment 11 #
Draft opinion
Recital C
Recital C
C. whereas multilingualism is one of Europe’s greatest assets and a founding principle of the European Union, but also one of its biggest challenges;
Amendment 13 #
Draft opinion
Recital C a (new)
Recital C a (new)
Ca. whereas the European Commission acknowledges that Digital Single Market must be Multilingual; whereas no common EU policy is proposed to address language barriers problem;
Amendment 15 #
Draft opinion
Recital D
Recital D
D. whereas the penetration of cross border e-commerce is very low; whereas LTs can contribute to future European cross-border and cross- language communication, boost economic growth and, social stability and strengthen EU competitiveness worldwide;
Amendment 20 #
Draft opinion
Recital E a (new)
Recital E a (new)
Ea. whereas difficulties in accessing linguistic data (including online data and research data sets) is constraining the technological development of language technologies;
Amendment 21 #
Draft opinion
Recital F
Recital F
F. whereas technological mastery of human language could enable a wide range of innovative IT products and services in industry, commerce, government and administration, that are empowered and made possible by the enormous amount of data expressed in human language, and that can communicate with users in natural language;
Amendment 23 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C
Recital C
C. whereas multilingualism comes under the scope of a series of EU policy areas, including culture, economy, digital single market, lifelong learning, employment, social inclusion, competitiveness, youth, civil society, mobility, research and media; whereas more attention needs to be paid to removing barriers to intercultural and interlinguistic dialogue;
Amendment 26 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital D
Recital D
D. whereas language technologies are used in manypractically all everyday digital products and services, since most use language to some extent (especially all internet-related products such as search engines, social networks, e-commerce services);
Amendment 27 #
Draft opinion
Recital G
Recital G
G. whereas Human Language Technologies (HLTs) in Europe are still far behind, owing to market fragmentation, uncoordinated research and, insufficient funding and legal barriers;
Amendment 32 #
Draft opinion
Recital G a (new)
Recital G a (new)
Ga. whereas top players in Language Technologies are not Europeans and do not address the specific needs of Europe;
Amendment 32 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital E
Recital E
E. whereas fulfilling the Barcelona objective of enabling citizens to communicate well in their mother tongue plus two other languages would give people more opportunities to access culture, to access the digital single market and to participate as citizens; whereas additional means and tools, especially those provided by language technologies, are key to managing European multilingualism properly;
Amendment 34 #
Draft opinion
Recital G b (new)
Recital G b (new)
Gb. whereas we have substantial breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence; whereas Language technologies are essential to ensure that Artificial Intelligence is multilingual;
Amendment 35 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph -1 (new)
Paragraph -1 (new)
-1. Underlines that the Digital Single Market cannot be implemented without technological solutions to overcome language barriers; asks the Commission to develop a strong and coordinated strategy for the Multilingual Digital Single Market;
Amendment 36 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Strongly supports the creation of a coordinated initiative (“Human Language Project”) with a robust, large- scale and long-term funding scheme on HLTs with the aimscientific goal of tackling dDeep nNatural lLanguage uUnderstanding atby 2030. The funding scheme needs to operate at the European, national and regional level, including the participation of research centres, academia, enterprises, in particular SMEs, and other relevant stakeholders; stresses that this project should be open, cloud-based and interoperable and provide highly scalable, high-performance and robust basic tools and platforms for several LT applications;
Amendment 38 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital F
Recital F
F. whereas the fast pace of development in language technologies and language-centric Artificial Intelligence offers new opportunities for digital communication, digitally-enhanced communication and technology-enabled communication in all European languages (and beyond);
Amendment 41 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital G
Recital G
G. whereas the common European values of cooperation, solidarity, equality, recognition and respect should mean that all citizens have full and equal access to newdigital technologies, which would not only improve European cohesiveness and wellbeing but also enable the multilingual digital single market;
Amendment 43 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 a (new)
Paragraph 1 a (new)
1a. Stresses the necessity to reduce the technology gap between languages by strengthening the knowledge and technology transfer;
Amendment 49 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Regrets that due to the lack of adequate policy in Europe there is currently a widening technology gap between well-resourced languages and less-resourced languages, whether the latter are official, co-official or non-official in the EU; whereas some of the latter may already be facing digital extinction;
Amendment 57 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Supports the development of multilingual public services in European, national, regional and local administrations with innovative, inclusive and assistive HLTs, which will reduce inequalities among languages and language communities, promote equal access to services and stimulate the mobility of businesses, citizens and workers in Europe.;
Amendment 60 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Notes the deepening digital divide between widely-used and lesser-used languages, and draws attention, given the ever-increasing digitalisation of European society, for example in public servicein public and private service and content provisions, to the rights and access issues that this will lead to, particularly for the elderly and those on low incomes;
Amendment 62 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
4. Notes that while Europe has a strong scientific base in language engineering and technology, the market is currently dominated by non-European actors, and that this may noteither be suitable nor sufficient for addressing the specific needs of a multilingual Europe; highlights the need to shift this paradigm and reinforce Europe's leadership in language technologies by creating a Human Language Project tailored specifically to Europe’s needs and demands;
Amendment 63 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3 a (new)
Paragraph 3 a (new)
3a. Underlines the necessity to strengthen the collaboration between the industry and data owners; stresses the need to adapt the regulatory framework and ensures more open, interoperable use and collection of language resources;
Amendment 66 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3 b (new)
Paragraph 3 b (new)
3b. Stresses that Europe has to secure its leadership position in the field of language centric Artificial Intelligence; reminds that EU companies are the best placed to provide solutions tailored to our specific culture, societal and economical demand;
Amendment 66 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
5. Notes with concern that the Digital Single Market remains fragmented by significant language barriers, thus hindering online commerce, communication via social networks and other communication channels, and the exchange of cultural content, as well as the wider deployment of pan-European public services;
Amendment 69 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 7
Paragraph 7
7. Commends the important role of previous EU-funded research networks such FLaReNet, CLARIN, HBP and META-NET (including META-SHARE) for leading the way in the construction of a European language technology platform;
Amendment 83 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10
Paragraph 10
10. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to develop strategies and policy actions that will allow multilingualism in the digital market; in this context asks the Commission and the Member States to define the minimum language resources, such as data sets, lexicons, speech records, translation memories, annotated corpora and encyclopaedic contents, that all European languages should possess in order to avoid digital extinction;
Amendment 88 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10 a (new)
Paragraph 10 a (new)
10 a. Asks the Commission to review its “Framework Strategy for Multilingualism” and propose a clear action plan on how to promote linguistic diversity and overcome language barriers in the digital area;
Amendment 95 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11
Paragraph 11
11. Calls on the Commission to establish a large-scale, long-term funding programme ("Human Language Project") for research and development and innovation, with a view to developing innovative technologies and services, achieving the next scientific breakthroughs in this area and contributing to the reduction of the technology gap between European languages;
Amendment 98 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 13
Paragraph 13
13. Recommends the creation of a European language technology platform with representatives from all European languages, that enables the sharing of language technology-related resources, services and open source code packages;
Amendment 101 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 14
Paragraph 14
14. Recommends the extension of the EU-fundedestablishing or extending projects such as, among others, Digital Language Diversity Project, to coverhat carry out research into the digital needs of all European lesser-used languageanguages, including those with very small numbers of speakers to those with very large numbers of speakers, so as to address the digital divide issue and help prepare these languages for a sustainable digital future;
Amendment 104 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 15
Paragraph 15
15. Recommends an update of the META-NET White Paper Series, published in 2012 in the form of a pan- European survey on the status of language technologies and ,resources for all European languages, information about language barriers and policies related to the topic, and thus provides the possibility to assess and develop language technology policies;
Amendment 110 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16
Paragraph 16
16. Believes that owing to the current situation whereby non-European actors dominate the market in language technologies, European education policies should aim at retaining talent in Europe, should analyse the current educational needs related to language technology (including all involved fields and disciplines), and should raise awareness among schoolchildren and students of the career opportunities in the language technology and language-centric AI industry;