Post on 29-Dec-2015
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 …