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Infrastructural and Policy issues for Language Resources in the Belt and Road Initiative I will highlight the importance of policy issues for the future of Language Technology (LT): issues such as standardisation, sharing resources, services and tools, adopting the paradigm of accumulation of knowledge and promoting replicability of research results. The challenges ahead depend on a coherent strategy involving not only the best research methods and technologies but also policy dimensions. Many of these policy dimensions were described in the FLaReNet final recommendations. LT is a “data-intensive” field and major breakthroughs stemmed from the use of large Language Resources (LRs). It is also a “knowledge-intensive” field. The next frontier will focus not only on text or multilingualism but also on the concurrent use of different types of data, across sectors and modalities (social media, and visual and multimodal data), and on the integration of text analytics with methods for capturing the full potential of the combination of various modalities and different semantic/pragmatic contexts. A critical point will be the adoption of consolidated methodologies of the LT/LR field (e.g. appropriate evaluation and interoperability) also when working on different types of data. In the current paradigm of open language infrastructures based on sharing LRs, services and tools, a way for LT to achieve the status of a mature science lies in initiatives enabling to join forces both in the creation of large LR pools and in big collaborative experiments using these LRs. This will enable building on each other achievements, integrating results (also with Linked Data). This cannot be achieved without standardisation efforts. I will point at current initiatives within ISO with respect to standardising LRs. This requires also an effort towards a culture of “service to the community” where everyone has to contribute. This “cultural change” is not a minor issue. I will mention how initiatives like the LRE Map, Share your LRs, ISLRN, are steps towards promoting the concept of Open Science, highlighting the role of ELRA and LREC in pushing towards this vision. I think in fact that research is strongly affected also by such infrastructural (meta-research) activities. These are particularly important also when dealing with Less-Resourced Languages, for which I will also point at the BLARK concept. We continue to promote, also through many of the initiatives above, greater visibility of LRs, sharing LRs in an easier way and replicability of research results as a normal part of scientific practice (also with a new initiative of the LRE Journal). This way we can strengthen the LR/LT scientific ecosystem while fostering sustainability. Any large initiative related to LRs and LT inside the Belt and Road initiative must take into account since the beginning such infrastructural and policy issues. (责任编辑：admin) |