HLT Industry in Flanders

Peter SpynsVlaamse overheid

Departement Economie, Wetenschap en Innovatie

Overview

• NTU HLT pages

• A bit of nostalgia• Some companies (randomly listed)• IBBT

• What do companies want for a future HLT R&D programme ?

http://taalunieversum.org/taal/technologie/organisaties/

Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products

• 1987 – 2001, • headquarters in Ieper• world wide biggest HLT company

– Many platforms: telephony, desktop, embedded, game consoles,

– Wide range of languages: including Arabic, Farsi, Japanese, Dutch, Mandarin Chinese, …

– Broad range of technologies and solutions: human and machine translation, spell checker, indexing, lemmatiser, information retrieval, Kurzweil reader, several ASR, dictation and TTS engines, …

Past Glory• Contracts with Microsoft

– used in the "Speech" option in the control panel of Microsoft Windows XP (abbreviated as LH)

– Microsoft Office uses certain elements of a grammar checker (cf. Help Info)

• Acquired: – Best Speech, Dragon Systems, Dictaphone, OmniMed,

Kurzweil Educational Systems, Inso, Wordperfect/Novell Antwerpen, Mendez Translation, GMS translation, ISI Pittsburg, Elan Speech, …

• Ended up bankrupt• Flanders Language Valley• Nostalgy:

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.lhs.com

International companies in Flanders

• Nuance International Communications (Gent – Merelbeke)– took over of L&H Ieper en Wemmel– (embedded) ASR, TTS (RealSpeak) and dialogue– Dictation (DragonDictate)– again, world wide biggest HLT company

• G2Speech (Leuven)– medical and legal dictation and work flow

applications

• Aktor knowledge technology (Thomson Reuters)– knowledge management and technology

• Advanced Bionics (Antwerpen)– hearing impaired, cochlear implants

Flemish International companies• Language and Computing (1998 - )

– (medical) language processing – (medical) knowledge engineering and ontologies– information extraction

• Xplanation Language Services (1991 - – controlled language, terminology– machine translation and work flow

• Voxtron (1994 - – contact center applications (telephony, email, fax,

…)• TeleAtlas (1988 – 2007 [now Tomtom])

– digital maps– location based services

Flemish companies• Prompt!Spraaktoepassingen (Brussel – Dilbeek)

– speech applications– dialogue flow and interaction consultancy

• Sensotec (Brugge – Varsenare)– Tools for visually impaired people

• Natlanco [Natlantech] (Gent) – Language technology (parsers)

• Indie Group – Televic (Izegem, Kortrijk)– education, e-health, logistics, transport applications, gaming

• i.Know (Diepenbeek)– knowledge engineering

• BLCC (Kortrijk, Leuven)– E-learning, language tests

• Technologie en Integratie– HLT for the impaired

• Crossminder– information retrieval and extraction

• Amplexor (Leuven – Holsbeek)– portals, search technology, content management

• ICMS (Leuven – Boortmeerbeek)– intelligent content management systems

• TriSoft (Mechelen)– technical communicatgion (translation, personalisation)

• Explio (Gent – Sint Denijs Westrem)– E-learning

• CommArt International (Diepenbeek)– E-(language) learning

• Mentoring Systems (Brugge – Oostkamp)

Flemish companies

companies located in Belgium• Acapela (Mons)

– ASR, TTS• Ubicall (Mons)

– telephony based speech applications• VoiceInsight (Brussels)

– ASR, TTS• DB-Scape (Waterloo)• Ring ring company – TellMe

– VXML portal• Zetes (Brussel)

– speech for voice picking applications• SAP – Business Objects (Brussel) [part of former L&H

Antwerp]– content management (indexing, retrieval, search)– other part now part of Empolis – Bertelsmann - Antwerpen)

• Quentris (Brussel)– call centre applications

«silent» HLT integrators/users• Toyota Motors Europe

– [top secret]

• Atlas Copco– internal training division

• Thomson Compumark (Antwerpen)– trade mark search

• EMC Corporation (Zaventem)– document management

• Stepstone (Zaventem)– profile matching

• Agfa Healthcare (Gent – Sint Martens Latem)– information retrieval, knowledge mining

Translation companies

• Lionbridge (Brussel) (ex-Mendez, ex-L&H, ex-Bown)

• SDL Internation (Leuven)• LanguageWeaver (Leuven)• Cross Language (Gent)

Institute for Broad Band Technology

• strategic research centre (virtual) (Gent)• yearly budget: +/- 38 M € (for 5 years)• topics: [www.ibbt.be]

– E-health, E-government, new media, mobility and logistics, basic ICT infrastructure and medical image processing

• excellent research on an international level• selected research groups• common technology platform• demand driven research agenda• usability test center

Screenshots Online Delphi bevraging

N=63

N=70

N=155

Deelnemers profielen

Panelleden konden meerdere alternatieven per onderwerp kiezen

Economic/societal need/desirability

[H10: 1->3 government policy]H1: 1 -> 5 new (multi-)media, (serious) gaming and leisure H2: 1 -> 5 tailored (government) communicationH3: 1 -> 5 e-governmentH4: 1 -> 6 livelong independent living

H5: 1 -> 5 e-(language) learning and testing [www.taalinbedrijf.org/forum]H6: 1 -> 5 translation and translation toolsH7: 1 -> 4 automotive, mobility and logisticsH8: 1 -> 5 business intelligenceH9: 1 -> 5 e-health

Conclusion

• no HLT industry in Flanders ?• HLT industry not comparable to the

Netherlands ?

If you look hard enough …