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Press release: Language Technologies are the Missing Piece in the Puzzle of Europe’s Digital Agenda! (PDF version)

On 19 June 2012, over 160 key players of the Language Technology (LT) industry met in Brussels for the first LTInnovate Summit.

The event showcased new technologies in LT and fostered venture capital investment opportunities. Most importantly, it successfully conveyed the message that Language Technologies are the missing piece in the puzzle of the EU’s strategy for the Digital Single Market.

Philippe Wacker, Secretary General of LT-Innovate, stated: “A multilingual infrastructure is as important for Europe as a broadband infrastructure! Making content produced in any language accessible to 500 million Europeans is the real opportunity in the decade ahead”.

Jochen Hummel, LT-Innovate Chairman and CEO of ESTeam emphasized: “What we need in Europe are language highways! They are essential to enable innovation and promote inclusion”.

Prof. Hervé Bourlard, chairman of IDIAP and Founder of successful LT startup Koemei provided an important clue as to how this could be achieved: “Europe’s investment in pipes should go hand-in-hand with an investment of substantial magnitude into creating multilingual conversational middleware that would allow people to access content generated by anybody, anywhere, anytime seamlessly through any device and in any language of their choice”.

Jochen Hummel concluded: “The language infrastructure is an important piece of enabling technology that the EU should procure as soon as possible. It would be a major booster for the European content economy with positive spill-over effects for almost every segment of the economy and society at large”.

12 innovative LT companies win the LT-Innovate Award 2012

During the Summit, 30 promising companies presented themselves in front of a Jury of investors, entrepreneurs and experts in the LT field. The Jury picked the twelve best to win the LT-Innovate Award 2012. The Winners were announced during the Gala Dinner and received their trophies from Members of the European Parliament Katarína Nevedalová, Amelia Andersdotter and Séan Kelly. MEPs stressed the importance of the sector for European innovation.

The Winners are:

  • 3DS Exalead, France
  • Bitext Innovations, Spain
  • Call Trunk Holdings, United Kingdom
  • Interverbum Technology, Sweden
  • Kwaga, France
  • LingleOnline, Ireland
  • Multilizer, Finland
  • NICE Systems, United Kingdom
  • TEMIS, France/Germany
  • Textkernel, Netherlands
  • XTM International, United Kingdom
  • Yocoy Technologies, Germany