Human Language Technologies

There are lots of definitions about “Human Language Technologies”. I want to propose two of them. These definitions have been done by scholars or relevant sites on the Web:

As Hans Uszkoreit said: “Language technology — sometimes also referred to as human language technology — comprises computational methods, computer programs and electronic devices that are specialized for analyzing, producing or modifying texts and speech. These systems must be based on some knowledge of human language. Therefore language technology defines the engineering branch of computational linguistics”.

As Meraka Institute said: “Human Language Technology (HLT) makes it easier for people to interact with machines. This can benefit a wide range of people – from illiterate farmers in remote villages who want to obtain relevant medical information over a cellphone, to scientists in state-of-the-art laboratories who want to focus on problem-solving with computers.”

Sources:

• http://www.meraka.org.za/humanLanguage.htm (12/03/08; hora de consulta19.20)
• http://liceu.uab.es/~joaquim/publicacions/FDS2000.html (12/03/08; hora de consulta: 19.45)
• http://www.dfki.de/lt/lt-general.php (12/03/08; hora de consulta: 19.09)