• The best machine translator in Basque is based on the latest intelligent technology.
• This is a quick and simple tool, the result of the collaboration between four Basque technology centres, the University of the Basque Country and a translation company.
• It will allow the dissemination of Basque and will influence the multilingualism of companies in the Basque Country.

Donostia-San Sebastián, 28 November 2018.

As of today, Basque society has the best machine translation system between Basque and Spanish: MODELA (www.modela.eus). Its development has been based on the most innovative artificial intelligence technique of today: Automatic Translation of Neural Networks (NMT). “We have found a way to apply this advanced technique that has so far been used in translation systems among the main languages, even with texts in Basque,” said Itziar Cortes and Igor Ellakuria, responsible for Translation Technologies of Elhuyar and Mondragon Lingua and MODELA.

Machine translation is experiencing major advances in the world, but it remains a major technological challenge. In this way, Basque has managed to position itself in a multilingual world and MODELA has been a great qualitative leap. In fact, in existing machine translation systems, the rich morphology of Basque and other characteristics limited the quality of the results, while in neural network-based systems this limitation has been exceeded and the linguistic technologies of Basque have been equated to other languages.

Machine translators based on neural networks offer great fluency compared to the systems we knew before. “In the case of Basque, MODELA offers quality translations never seen before. For the first time the doors have been opened for the practical use of an automatic translator in Basque”, added the managers of MODELA.

Possibility of spreading Basque in companies in the Basque Country

According to Langune's market study, the CAPV translation market (public and private) stood at around €40 million in 2017, with a total of €500 million translated words. Therefore, it will have a great influence on the development of technology and professionals, as is the case of MODELA, which allows to increase the productivity of translators. However, it does not replace professional translators, but helps create more content in Basque.

“The quality of the translations will allow daily communication (internal communication of companies, blogs, etc. ). The managers of Elhuyar and Mondragon Lingua-Mondragon Unibertsitatea have announced that “it can be processed in Basque”. That is, MODELA will contribute to increasing the written use of Basque in organizations and to the normalization of Basque, providing companies with a quality tool for those who are not able to communicate in Basque. In this way, internal communication in the organization will be guaranteed, facilitating each of them communication in their own language.

In addition to the above, this high-quality automatic translator in Basque will contribute to the development of language technologies and the creation of new applications, such as virtual assistants, text analysis, etc. These applications will have a huge impact on sectors such as health, public administration, advanced manufacturing or audiovisual.

The result of collaboration between four Basque technology centres, the University of the Basque Country and a translation company

The translator MODELA has been developed thanks to the collaboration between different agents of the Basque Network of Science, Technology and Innovation, and has been possible thanks to the collaboration of the Basque Government and SPRI through the research program ELKARTEK. The project has brought together the most representative Basque institutions in the research and development of linguistic technologies. In addition, the consortium has completed the entire chain from research to marketing, with the participation of different types of agents.

On the one hand, three leading entities in translation technologies (the Vicomtech research center, the Elhuyar Foundation and the Ixa group)of the UPV/EHU) have assumed the main technical developments of the project and has been in charge of the general management of the Ametzagaiña project. In addition, ISEA has validated and marketed the results of the project in collaboration with Mondragon Lingua and Eleka, a technology company of the Elhuyar Foundation. They also highlighted the contributions of Elhuyar, Mondragon Lingua and EiTB in collecting the linguistic data and content needed for the development of machine translation systems. Finally, Elhuyar and Mondragon Lingua have joined forces to expand the scope of the machine translator and accelerate its marketing.

Information and web service: www.modela.us

More information: @email / 688 860 706