National Centre for Language Technology

History of the NCLT

In 1988 the EU nominated DCU as the Irish research base for the Eurotra Machine Translation R&D project. DCU set up Eurotra Ireland within what was then the School of Applied Languages. The centre evolved and was awarded the National Centre for Language Technology by the Irish Government in 1990 with Dr. Jennifer Pearson as its first director (1990 - 1995). Dr. Alex Monaghan became the NCLT director in 1995 and Prof. Josef van Genabith took over in 2001. In 2008, Dr. Jennifer Foster became the director.

Initially the NCLT was the terminology hub for the entire Eurotra project and a prime mover in instigating investigation into the relevance of sublanguage research for machine translation.

In addition to fulfilling its contractual requirements for the Eurotra project, the National Centre for Language Technology became involved in, and promoted, a number of activities which contributed to the following achievements:

• Exceptionally positive review of its activities by an international panel of experts appointed to review achievements of all Eurotra research teams.

• Additional funding for NLP research after the end of the Eurotra project. This funding (1991-1992) enabled the centre to consolidate its research base.

• Development of significant expertise in NLP.

• Establishment of the B.Sc. in Applied Computational Linguistic, DCU.

• Establishment of language technology laboratory within SALIS. This laboratory is used for research and teaching in NLP.

• The Centre and its members have since been successful in securing substantial funding for a diverse range of language technology projects.

• The Centre was actively involved in securing SFI CSET funding for the Centre for Next Generation Localisation and now houses the CNGL management team as well as several CNGL PhD students and postdoctoral researchers.

Today, Dublin City University is still reaping the benefits of its decision to participate in the Eurotra project in 1988. There is a thriving NLP community within the University in the School of Computing, the School of Electronic Engineering, the School of Applied Languages and Intercultural Studies and the Centre for Next Generation Localisation.