Machine translation service launched for EU Presidency

Language technology company Tilde has launched a machine translation tool for the 2015 Presidency of the Council of the European Union, unveiled last week in Riga, Latvia. The EU Presidency Translator was specially designed for use by international journalists and EU Member State delegates attending official events during the 2015 EU Presidency.

With the translation tool, journalists and delegates can follow EU Presidency events in the Latvian media, read local websites and blogs, translate press materials and other news sources not available in English, and access government documents for general research purposes.

The EU Presidency Translator provides instant translation of texts, documents, and websites from Latvian to English and vice versa. The translation tool is available for download as a desktop and mobile app. Two freestanding translation kiosks have also been set up at the EU Council Presidency headquarters in the Latvian National Library.

This is first time that a machine translation tool has been used at such a high-level event to enable multilingual communication. The EU Presidency Translator provides the world’s highest quality automated translation quality for the Latvian language and is part of the Latvian e-gov machine translation service.

The machine translation technology powering the EU Presidency Translator, developed by Tilde in cooperation with leading European researchers, can be applied to other EU languages as well.

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 130 employees at offices in Riga, Tallinn, and Vilnius.

The EU Presidency Translator is available here: hugo.lv/translate2015

For more information, please contact:

Rihards Kalnins
International Development Manager, Tilde
Rihards.kalnins@tilde.com
hugo.lv/translate2015