This project aimed to build connections between the Europeana and Automated Translation Digital Service Infrastructures (DSIs) to improve the usability of heritage resources by translating the metadata of more than 25 million records available on Europeana.
Currently, the collections on the Europeana website showcase impressive linguistic diversity. However, the majority of metadata records are only available in the language of origin which represents a barrier to exploring and engaging with cultural heritage content.
To address this challenge, Europeana Translate connected the Europeana DSI with the Automated Translation DSI to advance the multilinguality of European digital cultural heritage. For this, the project developed a sustainable pipeline and a set of supporting tools that will provide cultural heritage resources sourced from Europeana to the ELRC-SHARE repository, the European language repository for documenting, browsing and accessing language data that feeds the Automated Translation platform DSI. Furthermore, the project enriched existing datasets on Europeana with multilingual metadata. The pipeline made use of Europeana APIs and the MINT data aggregation service of the National Technical University of Athens, and built upon the existing automated translation engines developed by the project partner Pangeanic.
As a result, the project aimed to translate the metadata of more than 25 million records available on Europeana into English and sent them back to the Europeana Core Service platform as enrichments. Additionally, it aimed to add 10 million metadata records from Europeana to the ELRC-SHARE repository. The resources included records with metadata in parallel languages (meaning, that all data will be in more than one language) and, where not possible, monolingual records, covering the 24 official languages of the EU. All resources are intended to be available for reuse, supporting the goal of eTranslation services to overcome language barriers and to assist European citizens and institutions with their multilingual needs.
Finally, the supporting set of tools were developed under an open licence to enable their use by cultural heritage institutions, service providers and other interested parties.
This project was an Automated Translation Generic Services project, co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility of the European Union.
National Technical University of Athens - Greece (coordinator)
European Fashion Heritage Association -Italy
Stichting Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld & Geluid - the Netherlands
Pangeanic SL P - Spain
Stichting Europeana - The Netherlands
Michael Culture Association - Belgium
