Ministry of Transport and Communications held the Third ERLC Workshop in Bulgaria

The Ministry of Transport and Communications held the Third ELRC Workshop in Bulgaria online on 24 November 2022. The event takes place within the European Language Resources Coordination (ELRC) project, in cooperation with the Institute for the Bulgarian Language at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. The project is funded by the Connecting Europe Facility Telecom. More than 80 participants registered for the seminar from the European Commission, 13 ministries, 8 commissions and agencies, the administration of the Council of Ministers, the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the Supreme Judicial Council, 6 universities, 7 companies working in the field of professional translation, information and language technologies, as well as foreign participants interested in the Bulgarian experience.

The Secretary General of the Ministry of Transport and Communications Mr. Ivan Markov officially opened the event. The workshop moderator was Mrs. Hristina Dobreva, National Anchor Point from Public Administration, and a member of the Language Resource Board. The main presentations at the forum were made by her and the National Anchor Point for language technologies - Prof. Dr. Svetla Koeva from the Institute of Bulgarian Language at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. The main topics of the workshop were the importance of data, the possibilities of automatic translation and the eTranslation platform, machine learning, the potential of artificial intelligence, technological components and language technologies in Bulgarian, details on the creation of a European Language Data Space, etc.

The Participants had the opportunity to get more information from the representatives of the European Commission about the new initiative for the European Language Data Space (Mr. Dhafer Lahbib, DG CNECT) and about the development and new applications of the automatic translation platform eTranslation (Mr. Bogomil Kovachev, DG Translation).

In the panel session "Language technologies by/for the public sector" Mrs. Annie Rusinova from the National Revenue Agency presented her personal experience of using eTranslation and sharing data with the ELRC repository. Mrs. Rusinova stressed the importance of sharing language resources across administrations to improve the quality of translations. Mr. Tsvetan Deyanov from the Ministry of e-Governance demonstrated the implementation of eTranslation functionalities in the Single Portal for access to electronic administrative services. In the section "Translation" of the portal, users are given the opportunity to translate a text (file) from and into the official languages of all EU member states. In the panel session "Language data creation, management and sharing: existing practices and challenges" Mr. Stanimir Minkov from the Administration of the Council of Ministers presented the Portal for public consultations - strategy.bg and the Platform for access to public information - pitay.government.bg, and Mrs. Reny Borisova from the Ministry of e-Governance presented the Portal for open data - data.egov.bg. With a specially recorded video presentation, Dr. Temenuzhka Spasova from the Ministry of e-Governance took part remotely and presented the National Spatial Data Portal - inspire.egov.bg. The fruitful discussion was complemented by the participation of Dr. Orlin Kоuzov, the head of the Education Laboratory at the Big Data for a Smart Society Institute (GATE), who with his extensive administrative experience shared his views on the application of various innovative technological solutions, and specifically language technologies in the public sector, the role of artificial intelligence and the use of big data in detecting misinformation and disinformation. Dr. Kouzov stressed the need to take concrete measures to improve the level of proficiency of the "technological" generation. During the workshop, there was also a demonstration session on language and artificial intelligence technologies in Bulgaria by Prof. Dr. Svetla Koeva, who presented the CURLICAT project - Collection of Multilingual Resources for CEF.A, and Dr. Yordan Kralev from the Technical University - Sofia, who presented applications and services using the Multilingual Image Corpus.

The workshop agenda, the presenters, and the panelists were positively appreciated by all participants and the organization of the event was highly appreciated by the ELRC representatives.

The Agenda for the Third National ELRC Workshop in Bulgaria: