Automated metaphor detection in languages other than English is highly restricted as training corpora are comparably rare. One way to overcome this problem is transfer learning. This paper gives an overview on transfer learning techniques applied to NLP. We first introduce types of transfer learning, then we present work focusing on: i) transfer learning with cross-lingual embeddings; ii) transfer learning in machine translation; and iii) transfer learning using pre-trained transformer models. The paper is complemented by first experiments that make use of bilingual embeddings generated from different sources of parallel data: We i) present the preparation of a parallel Gold corpus; ii) examine the embeddings spaces to search for metaphoric words cross-lingually; iii) run first experiments in transfer learning German metaphor from English labeled data only. Results show that finding data sources for bilingual embeddings training and the vocabulary covered by these embeddings is critical for learning metaphor cross-lingually.

Word embeddings capture semantic meaning of individual words. How to bridge word-level linguistic knowledge with sentence-level language representation is an open problem. This paper examines whether sentence-level representations can be achieved by building a custom sentence database focusing on one aspect of a sentence’s meaning. Our three separate semantic aspects are whether the sentence: (1) communicates a causal relationship, (2) indicates that two things are correlated with each other, and (3) expresses information or knowledge. The three classifiers provide epistemic information about a sentence’s content.

With 24 official EU and many additional languages, multilingualism in Europe and an inclusive Digital Single Market can only be enabled through Language Technologies (LTs). European LT business is dominated by hundreds of SMEs and a few large players. Many are world-class, with technologies that outperform the global players. However, European LT business is also fragmented – by nation states, languages, verticals and sectors, significantly holding back its impact. The European Language Grid (ELG) project addresses this fragmentation by establishing the ELG as the primary platform for LT in Europe. The ELG is a scalable cloud platform, providing, in an easy-to-integrate way, access to hundreds of commercial and non-commercial LTs for all European languages, including running tools and services as well as data sets and resources. Once fully operational, it will enable the commercial and non-commercial European LT community to deposit and upload their technologies and data sets into the ELG, to deploy them through the grid, and to connect with other resources. The ELG will boost the Multilingual Digital Single Market towards a thriving European LT community, creating new jobs and opportunities. Furthermore, the ELG project organises two open calls for up to 20 pilot projects. It also sets up 32 national competence centres and the European LT Council for outreach and coordination purposes.

The current scientific and technological landscape is characterised by the increasing availability of data resources and processing tools and services. In this setting, metadata have emerged as a key factor facilitating management, sharing and usage of such digital assets. In this paper we present ELG-SHARE, a rich metadata schema catering for the description of Language Resources and Technologies (processing and generation services and tools, models, corpora, term lists, etc.), as well as related entities (e.g., organizations, projects, supporting documents, etc.). The schema powers the European Language Grid platform that aims to be the primary hub and marketplace for industry-relevant Language Technology in Europe. ELG-SHARE has been based on various metadata schemas, vocabularies, and ontologies, as well as related recommendations and guidelines.