Latvia’s machine translation service Hugo.lv has been nominated for a World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) Project Prize in the category “Cultural Diversity and Identity, Linguistic Diversity and Local Content.”
Hugo.lv was developed with financing from the European Regional Development Fund as part of a collaborative project between the Cultural Information Systems Centre (KISC) and the language technology company Tilde, “Development of a multilingual corpus and machine translation infrastructure for providing access to e-services.”
The service provides secure automatic translation of texts, documents, and websites from Latvian to English and vice versa, as well as from Latvian to Russian. Hugo.lv was specially adapted for the Latvian language and the public sector, providing significantly higher translation quality than generic online service. Hugo.lv is integrated into the e-gov platform Latvija.lv, opening up access to e-services and information for a wide range of global users.
The WSIS Project Prizes are organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for issues that concern information and communication technologies. The prizes honor the international projects that implement the goals and aims outlined in the Geneva Plan of Action, adopted by the United Nations in 2003.
The winners of WSIS Project Prizes will be honored with an award during the WSIS Project Prizes 2015 Ceremony at the WSIS Forum 2015, to be held from May 25-29, 2015, in Geneva, Switzerland.
The Culture Information Systems Centre (KISC) operates under the Latvian Ministry of Culture. The Centre oversees national digitalization projects, which preserve cultural heritage and make it digitally accessible. Projects include IT implementation in archives, libraries, and museums, as well as the development of e-services for the cultural sector.
Tilde is a language technology company based in the Baltic states. To enable languages in the digital age, Tilde develops machine translation systems, online terminology services, mobile translation apps, and proofing tools. The company has over 130 employees at offices in Riga, Tallinn, and Vilnius.
Contact information:
Project manager – Jānis Ziediņš (KISC), tel. 6784488967844889, janis.ziedins@kis.gov.lv.
Information about machine translation – Rihards Kalniņš (Tilde), tel. 2959232129592321, rihards.kalnins@tilde.com.