EUROPEAN LANGUAGE DATA SPACE - How does the Language Data Space work?

The European Language Data Space (LDS) is designed as a distributed and decentralised ecosystem, consisting of central as well as local components. Each participant, be it a language data provider or consumer, needs to set up the LDS connector software on their own data infrastructure.

date: 13/03/2025

The connector consists of several modules designed to facilitate seamless, cross-platform and secure data exchange among the LDS marketplace members:

The information about the users that can access the LDS connector within an organisation is kept inside a local Identity and Access Management component, which includes the functionalities for registering and authenticating users and managing their roles.
To facilitate the creation of offers, the connector provides standardised descriptions of data asset types and of licensing policies under which such assets can be shared.

Further components support all operations necessary to

exchange information about offered data assets, to express interest in one of them, to sign a contract in full respect of the provider’s licensing policies and to transfer data between trusted participants,
retrieve offers from other participants in the digital LDS marketplace, and
keep track of all transactions.

The local components are connected through centralised technical components, aimed at improving security and interoperability of the Language Data Space.

Participants can discover data products via the Central Catalogue, which gives an overview of all data offerings available in the LDS marketplace.
The central Registry of LDS participants establishes trust within the LDS. It lists all active and validated participants in the LDS marketplace.
To ensure semantic interoperability, the vocabularies used by data providers are collected and mapped with standardised ones, enabling data consumers to understand the offerings.
A Monitoring Service saves information about all transactions between connectors in an encrypted form for later reference.

All this is designed to ensure safety and respect for intellectual property rights and full respect of EU values and regulations. By prioritising these principles, the LDS fosters trust throughout the language data sharing process, creating a secure and compliant environment for all stakeholders.