MELIN: Minority European Languages Information Network

The project will establish a centralised World Wide Web site for the provision of language resources to users of minority and lesser-used languages in the EU.Existing language resources - initially, terminology lists and monolingual/bilingual dictionaries will be converted to a standardised storage format - taking into account current TEI and SGML recommendations. A standardised multilingual interface will be designed to access all resources. These standards will be readily available to encourage other minority language service providers to join the network.

The website will initially cater for 4 languages - Irish, Welsh, Catalan and Basque and will contain definitive resources for each language. After this initial project it is intended to extend the service to other minority and lesser-used languages. The initial resources will be general purpose dictionaries for the 4 languages. Some partners will also provide grammars, spell-checkers and terminology lists.

Access to the site will initially be free of charge, in order to build up interest and a list of regular users.

Targeted users include:

• all those working, learning or communicating in a multilingual environment;
• language engineers;
• schools;
• public authorities and semi-state bodies who are obliged to use minority languages;
• private companies doing business in these areas;
• cultural organisations concerned with the propagation of such languages.

The project offers minority language users the opportunity to develop their languages for the multilingual information society, offering equality of access that would not be feasible on a single-language basis.

Already under development is the web site allowing the users to translate between certain language groups. The first stage will be English-Welsh, English-Irish, Basque-Spanish-French, Catalan-Spanish-French-English. These translations are taken from a variety of bi-lingual dictionary and terminology sources. There will be a standard interface to the translation pages available in each of the languages, which will interface to a database holding the data consisting of several hundred thousand terms. Users will be able to customise the interface to refelect the output best suited to their needs.

The technical development is being undertaken by Research Centre Wales.

Consortium:

Research Centre Wales University of Wales Bangor (UK)

Institiúid Teageolaiochta Éireann/Linguistics Institute of Ireland (IE)

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ES)

UZEI (ES)

Duration:

The project is scheduled to last from 1 January 1998 to 31 March 1999.

The project is part-funded by the Multilingual Information Society