Lingaware’s Dicobase

When French computer giant Bull decided it needed a multilingual terminological workstation to support its vast localization activities, it turned to Lingaware, a small consultancy based near Paris which specializes in applications of computational linguistics. The Bull system, called Termilo, which Lingaware designed and implemented, now serves as a central repository within Bull for terminological and lexical data for six languages. Termilo has been used to create user dictionaries for machine translation and Bull’s controlled language editor, the latter of which is widely used within Bull by technical writers. With Termilo, Bull acquired an attractive and powerful tool to coordinate its terminology across all six languages; as Bull ILO’s Amanda Brazier points out, “Bull is probably the only computer company that can check terminology correspondences across its target languages.”

For Lingaware, the Bull Termilo project enabled the company to expand and refine its extensive lexical database, called Dicobase. Implemented in the relational database Paradox, Dicobase is built of a large number of normalized, indexed tables containing morphological, syntactic, and semantic information for French, English, German, Italian, and Spanish, with semantic information coded by means of the Type Feature Logic formalism. Among other things, the domain-oriented semantic coding enables Lingaware to build controlled language applications. Lingaware also developed corpus analysis tools and other programs for processing linguistic data. Lingaware’s Gerard Dim- anche emphasizes that the Lingaware systems are not research prototypes, but designed to be implemented in working, industrial-grade systems like Termilo.
    Dicobase is also Unicode compliant. Dimanche is a staunch supporter of Unicode, but he adds that that should come as no surprise. Before becoming an independent consultant, he worked for Apple, which, as he points out, was one of the original founders of the Unicode initiative. Dimanche says that there are now Unicode proponents within Bull; it is something that is clearly on the horizon, something that any internationally operating company like Bull should want to embrace. However, it is more than likely that the priorities of this severely loss-making concern lie elsewhere, at least for the time being. Dimanche acknowledges that Unicode has a way to go in terms of application support before it will enjoy wider popularity.

Lingaware, Le Moutier BP 33, Orgerus, FR-78910, France; Tel: +33 1 34 87 22 99, Fax: +33 1 34 87 38 13