Thematic area: Information Society, Research and Innovation

EU Programme: MLIS (Multilingual Information Society)

Name of the project: MELIN (Minority European Languages Information Network)

Lead Institution/Consortium of partners:

Institiúid Teangeolaíochta Éireann/Linguistics Institute of Ireland, Ireland
Research Centre Wales, University of Wales Bangor, UK
UZEI, Donostia/San Sebastian, Spain
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain

Selection of possible EU funding; finding, collecting and analysing calls for proposals

Some of the larger partners (the universities) have offices dedicated to identifying sources for funding, including collaborative research funding, and they would be aware of large-scale calls for proposals. The smaller partners in general do not have a member of staff with the specific task of monitoring relevant EU calls for proposals.

However, a large proportion of collaborative proposals come about due to personal contacts already established by individual members of the organisations, reflecting their own areas of interest and specialisation. In these cases, a colleague from a different organisation may be made aware of a source of funding and then invites colleagues from other organisations to join in proposals. So no organisation relies solely on its own staff to identify collaborative possibilities.

ITÉ had experience of designing and participating in proposals for EU calls, including some large-scale projects such as Lingua and LE-PAROLE. Its experience in dealing with EU programmes as well as its status within the linguistic community made it an ideal choice to coordinate a relatively small-scale but important proposal such as MELIN.

ITÉ made full use of all documentation made available relating to eligibility, relevance, partner mix etc, in its preparation of the proposal. In addition there was a large amount of supporting material (some of it published by consortium members) to add weight to the rationale of the proposal.

Other sources of funding

Three of the four members were eligible (as educational institutions or research bodies) for the additional funding mechanism which meant that all additional costs associated with their participation in this project could be funded by the EU programme. The fourth member (a provate company) participated on a shared-costs basis (providing 50% of its costs from its own funds). The EU contribution to the total project costs was approximately 84.5%.

No other sources of funding were used for the project. Given the project size it was not felt necessary to seek additional funding. Such additional funding would have been difficult to obtain in any case.

Partners

The initial number of partners (4) made this an ideal project in terms of project management and coordination. Each partner had experience in dealing with multinational projects and was aware of the demands of such projects and well capable of meeting such demands.

Institiúid Teangeolaíochta Éireann/Linguistics Institute of Ireland
ITÉ is a state-owned and state-supported research centre. It acted as project Coordinator, contributed to all tasks and was responsible for the language-specific tasks for Irish. ITÉ provided an electronic version of the definitive Irish-language dictionary funded by the state.

Research Centre Wales, University of Wales Bangor
CYC was the main partner responsible for technical development and was also responsible for Welsh language-specific tasks.

UZEI
UZEI contributed to the technical work, and was responsible for all Basque language-specific tasks. UZEI is an institute working in the area of language development in the Basque Region for more than 20 years. It has agreements with the Basque Government, the regional authorities of Araba, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa, and with the Government of Navarre.

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
As well as its impressive expertise in electronic provision of language resources, the UAB also brought to the project its own electronic Catalan dictionary. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) has a commendable record in its work in informatics and the provision of language and pedagogical materials via telematics. It has a section dedicated to this area in its Faculty of Education, which also has close links with the University's Faculty of Translation and Interpretation.

Aims/purposes of the project

The project's aim was to develop a centralised World Wide Web presence for the provision of up-to-date language information for users of minority and lesser-used languages in the EU in an efficient, technologically-advanced manner, enabling full participation in the multilingual information society, and demonstrating the ability of such languages to thrive and make full use of such technology in their drive for equality of opportunity in Europe.

An EU-funded proposal was the logical solution in this case.

Collecting and taking into account experiences of other projects

A number of the partners had participated in similar multinational research and development projects and it was this experience which led directly to the formation of the consortium in this case.

The common areas of interest were language technologies and lesser-used languages. Previous experience had been in large-scale language technology and resources projects, which had contributed greatly to our knowledge of the current state of technology in these areas. It also contributed to the awareness of how much ground had to be made up in the case of lesser-used languages in order to bring them to the level of major languages. Therefore our consortium was carefully formed to bring the experience of partners who had worked in these large-scale projects together to focus on their own lesser-used languages.

We would highly recommend such a careful mix in future. It is not sufficient to have well-meaning partners who are dedicated to their own languages. It is necessary to gather a group of people who have proved themselves in the wider fields of technology and who can bring such experience to the partnership.

What problems/difficulties did you have (if any) when you designed the proposal?

Each of the partners in the consortium had many years of experience in the area of language technology and resources for lesser-used languages. Therefore, they had already clearly identified the stakeholders, and their interests and opinions regarding the problems to be solved. In some cases, the partners themselves would be stakeholders, in other cases (such as that of the coordinator) the partner was the state body responsible for informing policy on such matters and had already performed analysis in a wider context.

The consortium was extremely careful to ensure that the general and specific aims of the project fitted into the priorities laid down in the EU call for proposals.

Setting up a team to devise and design the proposal

One member of staff from each of the consortium members was assigned to assist in the drafting of the proposal. In each case, the team members had plenty of experience in developing similar proposals, in coordinating projects and in negotiating contracts with the EU and with commercial partners.

No special attention was given to taking into account potential risks on the success of the project.

Working language(s)

Given that we were dealing with languages of lesser diffusion, it was decided to propose a single working language. Once it was established that all principal project members were comfortable with English, it was chosen as the working language. This caused no problems at any stage.

Determining the work plan and time

All partners were used to developing work plans, and this experience was useful while writing the proposal.

Budget issues

Previous experience in such projects ensured that budgets and expenses were planned in strict accordance with local, state and EU rules.

European principles and criteria mentioned in the call were also carefully adhered to.

Other problems and issues

A problem which arose in the negotiation phase (before contract were signed) was the proposal by the Commission that the project be merged with another to be funded by the MLIS project. This might have had implications regarding the design of our database structures and the definition of standards. Following our own internal discussions and with the helpful advice of the MLIS programme team, it was decided that we should proceed with this work, pending further discussions with the partners in the other MLIS-funded project, due to the short timescale for our own MELIN project, and the requirement to have visible results up and running as soon as possible, leaving more scope for refinement and feedback.

As it happened, the project MELIN was effectively run as a standalone project - the second project was not active in time to ensure collaboration on these issues. The size of the MELIN project and the financial commitments of the partners meant that the project could (and needed to) proceed according to a strict timetable. This illustrated the advantages of such a relatively small project in achieving results according to schedule.

Contact:
Donncha Ó Cróinín doc@ite.ie