Deep Dive Text Analytics and Natural Language Understanding

In this chapter, we present a comprehensive overview of text analytics and Natural Language Understanding (NLU) from the perspective of digital language equality (DLE) in Europe. We focus on the research that is currently being undertaken in foundational methods and techniques related to these technologies as well as on the gaps that need to be addressed in order to offer improved text analytics and NLU support across languages. Our analysis includes eight recommendations that address central topics for text analytics and NLU, e. g., the role of language equality for social good, the balance between commercial interests and equal opportunities for society, and incentives to language equality, as well as key technologies like language models and the availability of cross-lingual, cross-modal, and cross-sector datasets and benchmarks.