Making Metadata Fit for Next Generation Language Technology Platforms: The Metadata Schema of the European Language Grid

Proceedings of the 12th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2020), pages 3428–3437 Marseille, 11–16 May 2020 c⃝ European Language Resources Association (ELRA), licensed under CC-BY-NC 3428 Making Metadata Fit for Next Generation Language Technology Platforms: The Metadata Schema of the European Language Grid Penny Labropoulou1, Katerina Gkirtzou1, Maria Gavriilidou1, Miltos Deligiannis1, Dimitrios Galanis1, Stelios Piperidis1, Georg Rehm2, Maria Berger2, Val´erie Mapelli3, Micka¨el Rigault3, Victoria Arranz3, Khalid Choukri3, Gerhard Backfried4, Jos´e Manuel G´omez P´erez5, Andres Garcia Silva5 1ILSP/Athena RC, Greece, 2DFKI GmbH, Germany, 3Evaluations and Language Resources Distribution Agency (ELDA), France, 4SAIL LABS Technology GmbH, Austria, 5Expert System Iberia SL, Spain {penny, gkirtzou, maria, mdel, galanisd, spip}@athenarc.gr, {georg.rehm, maria.berger}@dfki.de, {mapelli, mickael, arranz, choukri}@elda.org, Gerhard.Backfried@sail-labs.com, {agarcia, jmgomez}@expertsystem.com Abstract The current scientific and technological landscape is characterised by the increasing availability of data resources and processing tools and services. In this setting, metadata have emerged as a key factor facilitating management, sharing and usage of such digital assets. In this paper we present ELG-SHARE, a rich metadata schema catering for the description of Language Resources and Technologies (processing and generation services and tools, models, corpora, term lists, etc.), as well as related entities (e.g., organizations, projects, supporting documents, etc.). The schema powers the European Language Grid platform that aims to be the primary hub and marketplace for industry-relevant Language Technology in Europe. ELG-SHARE has been based on various metadata schemas, vocabularies, and ontologies, as well as related recommendations and guidelines. Keywords: metadata, language technology, language technology services, language resources 1. Introduction The rise of data-driven approaches that use Machine Learn- ing (ML), and especially the breakthroughs in the Deep Learning field, has put data into a central place in all scien- tific and technological areas, Natural Language Processing (NLP) being no exception. Datasets and NLP tools and ser- vices are made available through various repositories (insti- tutional, disciplinary, general purpose, etc.), which makes it hard to find the appropriate resources for one’s purposes. Even if they are brought together in one catalogue, such as the European Open Science Cloud1 or the Google dataset search service2, the difficulty of spotting the right resources and services among thousands still remains. Metadata plays an instrumental role in solving this puzzle, as it becomes the intermediary between consumers (humans and machines) and digital resources. In addition, in the European Union, with the 24 official and many additional languages, multilingualism, cross-lingual and cross-cultural communication in Europe as well as an inclusive Digital Single Market3 can only be enabled and firmly established through Language Technologies (LT). The boosting of the LT domain is thus of utmost impor- tance. To this end, the European LT industry needs to be strengthened, promote its products and services, integrate them into applications, and collaborate with academia into advancing research and innovation, and bringing research outcomes to a mature level of entering the market. The European Language Grid (ELG) project4 aims to drive for- ward the European LT sector by creating a platform and establishing it as the primary hub and marketplace …

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