Enriching Ontologies with Multilingual Information

Multilinguality in ontologies has become an impending need for institutions worldwide that have to deal with data and linguistic resources in different natural languages. Since most ontologies are developed in one language, obtaining multilingual ontologies implies to localize or adapt them to a concrete language and culture community. As the adaptation of the ontology conceptualization demands considerable efforts, we propose to modify the ontology terminological layer by associating an external repository of linguistic data to the ontology. With this aim we provide a model called Linguistic Information Repository (LIR) that associated to the ontology meta-model allows terminological layer localization

Interchanging lexical resources on the Semantic Web

Lexica and terminology databases play a vital role in many NLP applications, but currently most such resources are published in application-specific formats, or with custom access interfaces, leading to the problem that much of this data is in ‘‘data silos’’ and hence difficult to access. The Semantic Web and in particular the Linked Data initiative provide effective solutions to this problem, as well as possibilities for data reuse by inter-lexicon linking, and incorporation of data categories by dereferencable URIs. The Semantic Web focuses on the use of ontologies to describe semantics on the Web, but currently there is no standard for providing complex lexical information for such ontologies and for describing the relationship between the lexicon and the ontology. We present our model, lemon, which aims to address these gap

Rivière or Fleuve? Modelling Multilinguality in the Hydrographical

The need for interoperability among geospatial resources in different natural languages evidences the difficulties to cope with domain representations highly dependent of the culture in which they have been conceived. In this paper we characterize the problem of representing cultural discrepancies in ontologies. We argue that such differences can be accounted for at the ontology terminological layer by means of external elaborated models of linguistic information associated to ontologies. With the aim of showing how external models can cater for cultural discrepancies, we compare two versions of an ontology of the hydrographical domain: hydrOntology. The first version makes use of the labeling system supported by RDF(S) and OWL to include multilingual linguistic information in the ontology. The second version relies on the Linguistic Information Repository model (LIR) to associate structured multilingual information to ontology concepts. In this paper we propose an extension to the LIR to better capture linguistic and cultural specificities within and across language

Modelling Multilinguality in Ontologies

an impending need for institutions worldwide with valuable linguistic resources in different natural languages. Since most ontologies are developed in one language, obtaining multilingual ontologies implies to localize or adapt them to a concrete language and culture community. As the adaptation of the ontology conceptualization demands considerable efforts, we propose to modify the ontology terminological layer, and provide a model called Linguistic Information Repository (LIR) that associated to the ontology meta-model allows terminological layer localization

Approaches towards a Lexical Web: the role of Interoperability

After highlighting some of the major dimensions that are relevant for Language Resources (LR) and contribute to their infrastructural role, I underline some priority areas of concern today with respect to implementing an open Language Infrastructure, and specifically what we could call a ?Lexical Web?. My objective is to show that it is imperative to define an underlying global strategy behind the set of initiatives which are/can be launched in Europe and world-wide, and that it is necessary an allembracing vision and a cooperation among different communities to achieve more coherent and useful results. I end up mentioning two new European initiatives that in this direction and promise to be influential in shaping the future of the LR area

OntoMathPROOntoMath^{PRO} Ontology: A Linked Data Hub for Mathematics

In this paper, we present an ontology of mathematical knowledge concepts that covers a wide range of the fields of mathematics and introduces a balanced representation between comprehensive and sensible models. We demonstrate the applications of this representation in information extraction, semantic search, and education. We argue that the ontology can be a core of future integration of math-aware data sets in the Web of Data and, therefore, provide mappings onto relevant datasets, such as DBpedia and ScienceWISE.Comment: 15 pages, 6 images, 1 table, Knowledge Engineering and the Semantic Web - 5th International Conferenc

Enriching Ontologies with Multilingual Information

This paper presents a novel approach to ontology localization with the objective of obtaining multilingual ontologies. Within the ontology development process, ontology localization has been defined as the activity of adapting an ontology to a concrete linguistic and cultural community. Depending on the ontology layers – terminological and/or conceptual – involved in the ontology localization activity, three heterogeneous multilingual ontology metamodels have been identified, of which we propose one of them. Our proposal consists in associating the ontology metamodel to an external model for representing and structuring lexical and terminological data in different natural languages. Our model has been called Linguistic Information Repository (LIR). The main advantages of this modelling modality rely on its flexibility by allowing (1) the enrichment of any ontology element with as much linguistic information as needed by the final application, and (2) the establishment of links among linguistic elements within and across different natural languages. The LIR model has been designed as an ontology of linguistic elements and is currently available in Web Ontology Language (OWL). The set of lexical and terminological data that it provides to ontology elements enables the localization of any ontology to a certain linguistic and cultural universe. The LIR has been evaluated against the multilingual requirements of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in the framework of the NeOn project. It has proven to solve multilingual representation problems related to the establishment of well-defined relations among lexicalizations within and across languages, as well as conceptualization mismatches among different languages. Finally, we present an extension to the Ontology Metadata Vocabulary, the so-called LexOMV, with the aim of reporting on multilinguality at the ontology metadata level. By adding this contribution to the LIR model, we account for multilinguality at the three levels of an ontology: data level, knowledge representation level and metadata level

Ontology mapping: the state of the art

Ontology mapping is seen as a solution provider in today's landscape of ontology research. As the number of ontologies that are made publicly available and accessible on the Web increases steadily, so does the need for applications to use them. A single ontology is no longer enough to support the tasks envisaged by a distributed environment like the Semantic Web. Multiple ontologies need to be accessed from several applications. Mapping could provide a common layer from which several ontologies could be accessed and hence could exchange information in semantically sound manners. Developing such mapping has beeb the focus of a variety of works originating from diverse communities over a number of years. In this article we comprehensively review and present these works. We also provide insights on the pragmatics of ontology mapping and elaborate on a theoretical approach for defining ontology mapping

Representing Translations on the Semantic Web

The increase of ontologies and data sets published in the Web in languages other than English raises some issues related to the representation of linguistic (multilingual) information in ontologies. Such linguistic descriptions can contribute to the establishment of links between ontologies and data sets described in multiple natural languages in the Linked Open Data cloud. For these reasons, several models have been proposed recently to enable richer linguistic descriptions in ontologies. Among them, we nd lemon, an RDF ontology-lexicon model that denes specic modules for dierent types of linguistic descriptions. In this contribution we propose a new module to represent translation relations between lexicons in dierent natural languages associated to the same ontology or belonging to dierent ontologies. This module can enable the representation of dierent types of translation relations, as well as translation metadata such as provenance or the reliability score of translations

Ontology as Product-Service System: Lessons Learned from GO, BFO and DOLCE

This paper defends a view of the Gene Ontology (GO) and of Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) as examples of what the manufacturing industry calls product-service systems. This means that they are products (the ontologies) bundled with a range of ontology services such as updates, training, help desk, and permanent identifiers. The paper argues that GO and BFO are contrasted in this respect with DOLCE, which approximates more closely to a scientific theory or a scientific publication. The paper provides a detailed overview of ontology services and concludes with a discussion of some implications of the product-service system approach for the understanding of the nature of applied ontology. Ontology developer communities are compared in this respect with developers of scientific theories and of standards (such as W3C). For each of these we can ask: what kinds of products do they develop and what kinds of services do they provide for the users of these products