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How can CLARIN help me?

Submitted by martin.wynne@b… on

Looking for language data and tools?

CLARIN offers a number of ways for you to find and use a variety of software applications for language processing and sets of linguistic data. Whether you're looking for a parser for Estonian, transcription tools for spoken Swedish, optical character recognition software for old German texts, or a tool to recognize place names in Dutch newspapers, CLARIN can help you to find them, work out which one is for you and deploy them in your research. Increasingly, these tools can be run as web services, removing the necessity to download and install complex software, and can be combined in processing chains. When it comes to data, CLARIN is a one-stop-shop for language corpora and other large text collections, digitised literature, audio data, lexicons, grammars, endangered language materials, sign language videos, first and second language acquisition and a wealth of digital materials reflecting the wealth and diversity of human language in our cultural record.

The starting point for exploring and discovering these resources is the Virtual Language Observatory at http://www.clarin.eu/vlo. An alternative way to find lots of tools and data is to be found at the LINDAT CLARIN Centre for Language Research Infrastructure in the Czech Republic repository at http://lindat.mff.cuni.cz/.

Creating language data and tools?

If you are digitizing, annotating, aggregating, or otherwise creating new configurations of language data, then you will be thinking about what happens next. How will you share them with other researchers? How will it be licensed? How will people find it? How can it be combined with other data and tools? Who will look after the data into the future? How do I know who's using it and how? If you are creating software applications to help you and others capture, process, analyse and explore language data, then you might be looking for help in how to make the tools re-usable and sustainable. CLARIN can help you to get the maximum impact for your work with an infrastructure into which you can slot your data and tools, and then we'll take the strain by offering services to support the sharing, re-use and sustainability of your resources. CLARIN acts as a broker for the range of specialist repository services offered by CLARIN centres across Europe and beyond. The CLARIN-D Legal Helpdesk offers a service to advise academics and software engineers across Europe about licensing and other legal and ethical issues.

Planning a digital research project?

CLARIN can offer a range of solutions for researchers planning a research project in the humanities and social sciences with a digital component involving language resources. You can build CLARIN services into your project plan ensure that you are at the cutting edge and making the best use of relevant expertise, open standards and infrastructure solutions. Working with CLARIN should ensure that the computational aspects of your project are successful, and that the outputs and deliverables of your project can be shared, re-used and sustained effectively. CLARIN also works with funding bodies to promote good practice in digital aspects of projects.

Get in touch with your national CLARIN initiative or the CLARIN office to find out how we can help plan your research.