ENABLER Thematic Network of National Projects: Technical, Strategic and Political Issues of LRs

In this paper we present general strategies concerning Language Resources (LRs) - Written, Spoken and, recently, Multimodal - as developed within the ENABLER Thematic Network. LRs are a central component of the so-called "linguistic infrastructure" (the other key element being Evaluation), necessary for the development of any Human Language Technology (HLT) application. They play a critical role, as horizontal technology, in different emerging areas of FP6, and have been recognized as a priority within a number of national projects around Europe and world-wide. The availability of LRs is also a "sensitive" issue, touching directly the sphere of linguistic and cultural identity, but also with economical, societal and political implications. This is going to be even more true in the new Europe with 25 languages on a par.