Feb
Multilingual federated search, the ability to search and to view results from foreign language sources in your own language, may be just an interesting idea to some but there is a strategic value to the technology. Consider this article published by the BBC in March of 2011: China ‘to overtake US on science’ in two years. If the prediction of the UK’s national science academy, the Royal Society, proves true then sometime next year China will produce scientific research papers at a faster rate than the current leader, the U.S.
Researchers in the English-speaking world have mostly been restricted to searching only English language sources since the tools for simultaneously searching foreign language sources and for performing the translations haven’t existed until recently. Thus, opportunities to search scholarly journals in Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese and other languages associated with countries producing a great volume of science output are being missed. In an economic climate where performing research and getting products to market quickly translates to that competitive edge that leads to greater profits, being able to scour the research Web quickly, effectively, efficiently, and on an ongoing basis is critical to developing and maintaining a competitive edge.
Blog sponsor Deep Web Technologies has developed a patent pending multilingual search version of its Explorit federated search application that integrates the search and translation technologies making for a seamless and productive research environment for scientists, engineers, and researchers in business, science, and technology.
A publicly searchable deployment of Deep Web Technologies’ multilingual federated search is WorldWideScience.org. The site’s About page describes the application:
One-stop Searching of WorldWideScience Sources
WorldWideScience.org is a global science gateway comprised of national and international scientific databases and portals. WorldWideScience.org accelerates scientific discovery and progress by providing one-stop searching of databases from around the world (Architecture: What is under the Hood). Multilingual WorldWideScience.org provides real-time searching and translation of globally-dispersed multilingual scientific literature.
A recent article by search pundit Stephen Arnold at Beyond Search, Deep Web Technologies: Cracking Multilingual Search, provides a good overview of the history, challenge, and applications of the technology. Arnold is the creator of the Wizards series, in which he has interviewed dozens of leaders in the search industry, including Deep Web Technologies founder, president, and CTO Abe Lederman.
More information about Deep Web Technologies multilingual federated search technology is available in this blog’s archives on the subject. Articles include:
- Deep Web Technologies Adds Multilingual and Multimedia Search Capabilities to Its Explorit Research Accelerator
- WorldWideScience receives warm welcome at the UN
- Hope Leman on multilingual federated search
- Breaking Down the Language Barriers
- Deep Web Technologies unveils multilingual federated search
