Information access across languages on the web: From search engines to digital libraries

Abstract

AbstractInformation access across languages challenges researchers and practitioners in many disciplines, especially machine translation (MT) and Cross‐language Information Retrieval (CLIR). Google's cross‐language search is a model that integrates MT and CLIR technologies to help users find information on the Web that is not written in their familiar languages. This paper overviews the functions of Google's cross‐language search and its performance. It proposes strategies that digital libraries can apply for implementing multilingual information access through the discussion of the cases of five bilingual or multilingual digital libraries.