I am doing research and development of Langrid in NICT (National Institute of Information and Communications Technology). Langrid is an online multi language service basis to share language resources such as translation software, dictionaries and so on. I got to know Ms Mori, the President of Pangaea because she gave a lecture as a potential user of Langrid in a symposium which was held when the project had just started. After that Pangaea’s office moved to our neighbor in Kyoto. Since then we have been cooperating each other.

This project had been carried with future users collaborating between industry, academia and government from the beginning. Pangaea joined as a heavy user since we barely could give an easy demonstration of it.
Pangaea decided to use Langrid to build their website, even though at the first stage we were planning to support children’s communication collaborating with a translation service and Emoji service called Pictons which was developed by Pangaea. Because, as the project went by, we realized that staff members who supported projects were having problems rather than children. Thanks to working with Pangaea who has clear and persuasive needs, it was possible to have such a great amendment.

Owing to feedback of some experience of the Pangaea community site, we could finish building a BBS service of Langrid Toolbox, and Pangaea have been using Langrid Toolbox ever since. Furthermore, Pangaea used Langrid collaborating with an agricultural grid for YMC（Youth Mediated Communication）system which was a new phase of Pangaea.

Since Pangaea is a NPO which specialize R&D, they are the first to use new technologies. We experienced a loop of needs and seeds of “Necessity is the mother of invention” with collaboration with Pangaea. We hope that we can overcome cultural and linguistic differences revolving these loops.

Yohei Murakami
Language Grid Project
National Institute of Information and Communications Technology