Skip to content

About CLARIN

Slides

Download the slides here

Introduction

CLARIN (Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure) is a pan-European research infrastructure dedicated to making digital language resources and tools accessible to researchers, educators, and cultural institutions, particularly in the humanities and social sciences. The infrastructure supports a wide range of activities, from the development of linguistic data repositories to the creation of advanced tools for language processing and analysis. CLARIN aims to empower researchers by providing them with the resources and services they need to carry out complex language-related research, whether they are analyzing historical texts, studying spoken language, or exploring multilingual data.

CLARIN community network map

The CLARIN community is a collaborative network of national consortia and centers from various European countries. These consortia work together to develop, maintain, and share language resources, such as corpora, lexicons, and annotation tools. The community also provides training, support, and expertise to researchers who use these resources in their work. By fostering collaboration and knowledge exchange, CLARIN enhances the research capabilities of its members and promotes the reuse of language resources across different disciplines and countries.

CLARIN ERIC (European Research Infrastructure Consortium) is the governing body that coordinates the efforts of the CLARIN community at the European level. Established as a legal entity in 2012, CLARIN ERIC ensures the sustainability and long-term viability of the infrastructure. It facilitates the integration of national efforts into a unified European framework, allowing researchers to access resources and tools across borders seamlessly. CLARIN ERIC also plays a key role in advocating for the importance of language resources and technologies in research, promoting open access, and supporting the development of standards and best practices in the field. Through its activities, CLARIN ERIC contributes to the advancement of digital humanities, linguistics, and social sciences research across Europe.

CLARIN’s goals focus on advancing research in the humanities and social sciences by providing comprehensive access to language resources and tools. The key goals include:

  1. Facilitating Access to Language Resources and Tools: CLARIN aims to make a wide range of digital language data, tools, and services easily accessible to researchers, educators, and cultural institutions across Europe. This includes developing a standardized, user-friendly platform where these resources can be accessed and utilized effectively.
  2. Promoting Interdisciplinary Research: CLARIN encourages the use of language resources in a variety of disciplines, particularly in the humanities and social sciences. By providing tools that support complex linguistic analyses, CLARIN enables interdisciplinary research that can lead to new insights and discoveries.
  3. Fostering Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing: CLARIN seeks to create a collaborative network where researchers, institutions, and national consortia can share resources, tools, and expertise. This collaboration strengthens the research community and ensures the sustainability and advancement of language technologies.
  4. Ensuring Sustainability and Long-Term Availability: Through CLARIN ERIC, the organization works to ensure that language resources and tools are preserved and maintained for long-term use. This involves establishing legal frameworks, securing funding, and developing strategies for the continuous updating and enhancement of the infrastructure.
  5. Advancing Open Science and Open Access: CLARIN is committed to promoting open science principles by making language resources and tools openly accessible to the research community. This includes advocating for the adoption of open data practices and the development of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data standards.
  6. Supporting Multilingualism and Cultural Diversity: One of CLARIN’s goals is to support research in a wide range of languages, including less widely spoken and minority languages. By doing so, CLARIN helps preserve linguistic diversity and promotes the study of languages and cultures that may otherwise be underrepresented in digital research.
  7. Enhancing Research Capabilities through Advanced Tools: CLARIN provides state-of-the-art tools and services that enable researchers to perform complex language processing tasks, such as text mining, sentiment analysis, and machine translation. These tools help researchers unlock the full potential of large-scale language data.
  8. Developing Standards and Best Practices: CLARIN works to establish and promote standards and best practices for the creation, annotation, and sharing of language resources. This ensures that resources are interoperable, reusable, and of high quality, facilitating their use across different projects and disciplines.

Summary

CLARIN aims to advance humanities and social sciences research by providing easy access to digital language resources and tools, fostering collaboration, supporting multilingualism, and promoting open science principles.

Suggested Reading

Learn more