3rd ELRC Conference

Europe’s linguistic diversity can turn into an obstacle for public service administrations and for the provision of public services in Europe, e.g. when it hinders the free exchange of information or prevents unbiased access to public services, business opportunities, job opportunities, and support. Through the European Language Resource Coordination (ELRC), the European Commission is embarking upon an unprecedented effort to support the further development and adaptation of the automated translation platform (CEF eTranslation) to the needs of public services across all EU Member States, Iceland and Norway, thus supporting the provision of multilingual services for Europe’s citizens, administrations and businesses. CEF eTranslation will power Europe's public online services (see, for instance, the Online Dispute Resolution Platform, the eJustice Portal, Electronic Exchange of Social Security Information (EESSI), the European Data Portal, etc.)

Target audience
The ELRC Conference targets public service administrators and representatives of public sector bodies in all CEF affiliated countries. This includes in particular the responsible translation services, as well as representatives for digitisation, representatives of information offices and/or public relation offices, as well as people responsible for data and data management. ELRC opts for attracting representatives of all CEF affiliated countries. Since the number of seats is limited (150), the conference is an invitation-based event. All invitations are issued by the European Commission.

Focus and contents
This year’s conference will focus on approaches for optimizing the translation process in particular through sustainable data sharing models. The first day features the Arena of Opportunities where participants can meet different experts and language technology service providers and discuss existing solutions face-to-face. This also includes demonstrations of the latest available tools and services for computer-assisted translation, machine translation, and the processing of language resources. The second day of the ELRC Conference is dedicated to the plenary sessions that will:

• Illustrate the needs of public services (in particular CEF Digital Services) with regard to multi-linguality and language resources: An overview will be given of different online services (e.g. eJustice, Online Dispute Resolution platform, etc.), their underlying translation process, and corresponding requirements for language resources.
• Demonstrate the benefits and possibilities of new tools and services to support the translation process: Experts from the language technology industry, users of language technologies and Language Service Providers (LSPs) will provide clear and hands-on accounts from their day-to-day practice of novel tools and services, their effects and their benefits for the translation process. There will also be a direct illustration of the role of data for the quality and speed of translation, showing what can be achieved with the right tools and data.
• Illustrate successful approaches for sustainable data sharing in different public service scenarios: Best practice examples and different approaches of sustainably sharing language resources within prominent national ministries and public service administrations will be given. Their impact on optimizing the translation process will be illustrated.

						/isa2/file/201616pmkijpg_en2016.16_pmki.jpg DON'T MISS! Session on the Public Multilingual Knowledge Infrastructure (PMKI) supported by ISA²! ​  part of the block: Meet the experts and check out live solutions 15:00 - 17:00, 7 November 2017 Najeh Hajlaoui (Publications Office of the EU) More about the PMKI