Dr. Rolf Schwitter
Centre for Language Technology -
Macquarie University Sydney, Australien

Practically-focussed Language Technology

In the first half of my talk, I will question the industrial relevance of much that is nowadays taught in NLP courses and emphasize the need for a more practically-focussed orientation. I will speak about an undergraduate program in Language Technology that we developed at Macquarie University over the last three years. Our program was supported by a number of industrial partners, including the branches of Motorola, Sun Microsystems, Philips Speech Systems and the government research agency CSIRO. The second half of my talk will be more research-oriented: I will speak about a computer-processable controlled natural language designed for writing unambiguous and precise specifications and use cases. Texts written in this well-defined subset of English can be unambiguously parsed and translated into a corresponding formal language. Anyone who can read and write English can immediately use the controlled language with the help of an intelligent text editor. The arising specification can be automatically checked for consistency and informativity with the help of third-party reasoning services.