One of the main application areas for language technology is document preparation. High-level word processing technology has been developed mainly for English and partly for other European languages and Japanese, but is almost completely missing for Slavic languages.
The objective of this project is to transfer state-of-the-art natural language technology to a selected group of Slavic languages. The selection was made so as to represent two of the three main Slavic groups: Czech (Western Slavic) and Bulgarian (Southern Slavic). To meet the main goal of the project, the relevant differences between the investigated Slavic languages and the languages for which the processing technologies mentioned already exist (mainly English) will be explored where necessary Ðfirst of all as to the differences in the interplay between syntax and word order, where the two groups of languages typologically differ. The outcome of these efforts will be prototypes of grammar checkers for Bulgarian and Czech.
The academic partners of the EC funded joint research project are the University of the Saarland, the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, the Charles University, Prague and the Bulgarian Academy of Science, Sofia; the industrial partners are Macron Limited, Prague and Bulgarian Business Systems Limited, Sofia.