KYOTO: A System for Mining, Structuring, and Distributing Knowledge Across Languages and Cultures

We outline work to be carried out within the framework of an impending EC project. The goal is to construct a language-independent information system for a specific domain (environment/ecology) anchored in a language-independent ontology that is linked to WordNets in several languages. For each language, information extraction and identification of lexicalized concepts with ontological entries will be done by text miners ("Kybots"). The mapping of language-specific lexemes to the ontology allows for crosslinguistic identification and translation of equivalent terms. The infrastructure developed within this project will enable long-range knowledge sharing and transfer to many languages and cultures, addressing the need for global and uniform transition of knowledge beyond the domain of ecology and environment addressed here.