The Mission of PCom
The aim of ELRA Production Committee, PCom, is to promote and support the production of Language Resources (LRs) needed for commercial and research use.
In order to achieve this goal, PCom will identify the needs of LRs both for commercial/industrial and research activities and in relation with the BLARK (Basic Language Resources Kit) [1] / ELARK (Extended Language Resources Kit) concept. For more information, please refer to http://www.elda.org/blark).
On these bases, it will provide a framework or even different possible scenarios for the LRs production, promoting in particular new initiatives for producing LRs with a strategic impact.
In addition, a joint task of PCom and VCom together is to collect, optimize, develop and promote standards and best practices for LRs specifications.
Another task is to manage the production of LRs patches, based on the Formal Error Lists (FELs) provided by VCom.
PCom activities are based on a business plan which takes into account the Return Of Investment (ROI) analysis.
Finally, PCom has to look after the establishment of production centres and partnerships.
[1] The BLARK concept was defined in a joint initiative between ELSNET (European Network of Excellence in Language and Speech) and ELRA (European Language Resources Association) [Krauwer, 1998] and first launched with a Dutch initiative called Dutch Human Language Technologies Platform that was initiated in April 1999. Then, in the framework of the ENABLER thematic network (European National Activities for Basic Language Resources -Action Line : IST-2000-3.5.1), ELDA elaborated a report defining a (minimal) set of LRs to be made available for as many languages as possible and mapping the actual gaps that should be filled in so as to meet the needs of the HLT field.
A good illustration of the BLARK concept is the work done to gather information about Arabic resources within the NEMLAR project [Maegaard, 2004].
The BLARK concept may be extended to many other languages and this is the aim of the present web site.