Slides from a presentation given at the NATO Terminology Conference on 20 November 2015

1. Multilingual Knowledge Systems
The Key Interoperability Asset
Michael Wetzel
Managing Director Coreon GmbH
NATO Conference on
Terminology Management
19-20 November 2015

2. Nov 19-20 2015 NATO Conference on Terminology Management @wetzelmichael 2
Meaning Understood by All Stakeholders?

3. Nov 19-20 2015 NATO Conference on Terminology Management @wetzelmichael 3
European Interoperability Framework

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Semantic versus Syntactic Interoperability
Connecting systems
Vocabularies only for meta data?
Rather syntactic interoperability

5. Nov 19-20 2015 NATO Conference on Terminology Management @wetzelmichael 5
Semantic Interoperability
The precise meaning of exchanged information
is understood by all stakeholders…
…and preserved throughout exchanges.
At back-office level, the underlying information
architectures should be linguistically neutral so
that multilingualism is not a blocking issue.
Semantic Interoperability Assets: Sector-specific
sets of data structures and data elements.
Agreement on the meaning of the information to
be exchanged.

6. Nov 19-20 2015 NATO Conference on Terminology Management @wetzelmichael 6
Status of Interoperability
Relatively new undertaking, not achieved before.
Different linguistic, cultural, legal, and administrative environments
make it hard.
Multilingualism adds further complexity to the problem.
Missing agreement by sector-specific and cross-sectoral communities on
the use of semantic interoperability assets.

7. Nov 19-20 2015 NATO Conference on Terminology Management @wetzelmichael 7
Termbases, Glossaries
•Control language
•Focus on translation
•Lack knowledge modelling
•Only searching, no exploring
Taxonomies, Thesauri
•For knowledge structuring
•Lack multilingualism
•Lack language control
Before MKS: Two Parallel Approaches to
Inventorise and Leverage Knowledge
Huge, unaddressed potential for cross-lingual data
analysis, enterprise search, e-discovery and to
facilitate interoperability
would boost with data
would add structure
… …
mirror base Spiegelfuß
wing mirror Außenspiegel
… …
mirror
wing
mirror
left wing
mirror
…

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A Repository for Knowledge
08
45
76
35
17
1: Taxonomy: 
output
devices
visual
output
devices
screen
audio
output
devices
head-
phones

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A Repository for Knowledge and Language
3: Multilingualism: 
Synonymy
• screen • monitor
• écran
• Bildschirm• Monitor • Display
08
45
76
rejected
accepted
35
17
2: Synonymy: 1: Taxonomy:  4: Control: 9

10. Nov 19-20 2015 NATO Conference on Terminology Management @wetzelmichael 10
Meaning Driven Knowledge Processing
Synonymy
• screen • monitor
• écran
• Bildschirm• Monitor • Display
• visual output device
• Optisches Ausgabegerät
08
45
76
rejected
accepted
35
17
3: Multilingualism: 2: Synonymy: 1: Taxonomy:  5: Meaning: ~4: Control: 9

11. EUROVOC as an MKS

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Creating a Large Scale MKS
Multiple relevant
terminologies in the same
language are merged into
a unified resource.
Linguistic similarity search
maps units that share the
same meaning.

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Concept Mapping Example:
Trademark Classifications
Remote controls for diapositive projectors
Remote controls for projectors
Controls for projectors
Remote controls for slide projectors
Uses advanced linguistic search activating strict metadata
rules to assure meaning matching.

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…also Multilingually!
Cross language merge is
deployed to find links and
equivalence across
language borders.
Metadata keeps track of
variations.
UK SE DE
Countries without data
fill in their language
inside the resource –
adding concepts and
ignoring those not
relevant

15. Nov 19-20 2015 NATO Conference on Terminology Management @wetzelmichael 15
Success Story EU Organization OHIM
45 Participating Countries, all the
EU and USA, China, Japan, Korea,
and still expanding
Economical savings in EU member
states administration of IP –
Millions annually
Economical gains of industry
having their IP rights much faster
validated - Billions annually
This is a win-win – the entire
project including work carried out
internally ca 30 Mil Euro
http://tmclass.tmdn.org/ec2/

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Project Statistics
Start
• 110,000 English terms
• Other languages ranging from 8,000 to 60,000 terms
Clean
• Reduced English to 93,000 terms
Language
coverage
• 93,000 terms in all EU languages too expensive without automation
• Therefore: Mining data for translations
• DB grew from 400,000 to 2.1m terms
Conceptual
clustering
• Non essential entries removed – DB shrunk to 1.5m terms
• Semi-automatic creation of 50,000 meaning clusters
Taxonomy
• Built for the top layers and concepts linked

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The Key to Successful Interoperability
“We have to share ideas
and try to align,
map between concepts,
rather than trying to
harmonize different world
perspectives.”
Tom van Engers,
Leibniz Center for Law, Amsterdam

18. Manage Enterprise Knowledge
Globally Across Languages
Michael Wetzel
m michael@coreon.com
c +49 173 3575868
s mlwetzel
t @wetzelmichael
l Stuttgart