The Babbage Institute for Knowledge and Information Technology was founded in 1985 in order to support the research needs and to support the realisation for solutions for industry and services in the field of advanced knowledge- and information technology (KIT) and Management (KIM).Bridging the gap with universities and industrial colleges, BIKIT is able, through project execution, to incorporate the most recent developments such as e.g. electronic document management, inter-, intranet, virtual and augmented reality technology and computer-supported co-operative work.

BIKIT conducts and supports research and technology transfer in function of concrete needs of endusers among its members or European consortium partners.Through f.i. explicit user modelling and an 'on line feedback' method BIKIT assures the support or bridge between several partners for the realisation of an integrated and useable knowledge and information technology.Several patents have been produced and hundreds of scientific books and articles have been published.

BIKIT’s role within this project will consist of self-assessment / assessment, interpreter/vocational training and dissemination/exploitation.

VARTEC NV is specialized in delivering learning / training applications, document management, content management and visualization management solutions. Our primary objective is to ensure that the training, document & content management, visualization solution is successful across the enterprise, not just for today, but for the long term. The company consists out of three divisions: 3D & VAR, e-webtec and @dm.

3D & VAR includes the following departments: Products, Interactive, Tools. Each one offering solutions for multimedia, 3D animation, Virtual and Augmented Reality applications.@dm - advanced document management - is specialised in the field of electronic data management.

E-webtec offers a wide range of services related to the inter/intranet.

Several patents and scientific articles have been produced.

VARTEC NV is the promoter and administrative organisation in this project and its role will include self-assessment / assessment, visualisation technology provider and dissemination/exploitation.

College of Tourism: At the College of Tourism qualified personells for the Bulgarian touristic industry are taught. At the college is developed various research, publishing, consulting and expert help for Tourism SMEs activities. The college is equipped according to European standards. The learning corps of the college includes a rich library, learning halls, conference halls, modern equipped video and audio studios. For the students’ education needs there is hotel complex ‘Park’ which includes 145 double rooms, day-bar, restaurant, café, and sporting complex. At the college there are the following specializations: ‘Organization and management of the tourist services’; ‘Organization and management of the hotel and the restaurant’. At the college curricula is included learning of the following languages: English, French, German, Italian, Espaniol, Norw?y, Russian, Pollish, and Czech.The role of the College of Tourism in this project will be composed of self-assessment / assessment, interpreter & vocational training and exploitation & dissemination.

DAEDALUS – Data, Decisions and Language, s.a.DAEDALUS is a company founded in the year 1998 as a spin-off of UPM and UAM, two universities located in Madrid. It is a SME with currently 25 employees. Its capital is private, 100% owned by university researchers and key personnel of the company. The main areas of activity are the following ones:
1. Knowledge Management: DAEDALUS develops products and systems for KM. The available technology includes automatic full content information extraction and retrieval, automatic text categorization, user profiling, Internet spider, workflow automation, etc.
2. Linguistic Technology: DAEDALUS offers products and services for high quality spelling, grammar and style checking of texts (through its portal daedalus.revisado.com).
3. Data and Web Mining: DAEDALUS develops products and services for web mining (through the portal daedalus.lawerinto.com) and data mining in general (e-commerce, marketing, user profiling in e-learning, etc.)
4. XML technology: DAEDALUS develops XML based solutions. Some applications include integration of XML communication protocols for diagnosis and control of distributed machines, e-learning platforms, linguistic checking of XML documents, etc.
5. Web technology: DAEDALUS develops and delivers web-based products and services in different fields, incorporating knowledge management and workflow technologies.

The role of DAEDALUS in this project will include self-assessment / assessment, language engineering technology provider and exploitation & dissemination.

The European Society for Translation Studies (EST) founded in 1992 and containing 280 members from 35 countries. EST stands for a network for stimulating and coordinating research in translation and interpreting. It is a center for information and know-how on issues of quality and training in translation and interpreting and organises in this regard a Translation Studies Congress every three years.The role of EST will mainly consist of self-assessment / assessment and exploitation & dissemination.

Hogeschool Gent – Department for translation studies (Higher Education Institution Ghent)Hogeschool Gent is the outcome of two successful mergers that involved sixteen institutions of higher education in the area of Ghent, Flanders. Its goal is to link, mix and interconnect this formidable range of assets to create surplus value in the fields of education, applied research, services and the development of the arts. Hogeschool Gent is the largest 'hogeschool' in the country in terms of budget, staff and student population, which allows the institution to offer additional services and opportunities, such as professional units for communication, culture and internationalization. Hogeschool Gent also has the widest range of subjects on offer, in fact, almost anything from the fine arts to engineering sciences: seventy-six basic courses and ninety degrees cover 90% of all fields of study in Flemish higher education.

Hogeschool Gent consists of 13 departments, a Centre for Applied Research and Services, an 11ha research farm, a 20ha site including a historic park for agriculture and horticulture and an interdisciplinary projects platform (Nexus)Ghent Translation and Interpreting College is one of the thirteen colleges of the Hogeschool Gent. Its main aim is to provide language, translation and interpreting training at BA and MA levels to students in six foreign languages (Czech, English, French, German, Russian, and Spanish), Dutch being the native language. As an academic institution, it also plays a role in translation and interpreting studies, in particular the training of interpreters and translators, terminology, (second) language acquisition/learning/teaching, and information retrieval in documents.

Ghent Translation and Interpreting College has about 80 members of staff, and a total of 750 students. Rita Godijns is the head of the college, Sonia Vandepitte coordinates research activities. Thirteen individual research projects are led by Rita Godijns, Joost Buysschaert, Paul Robberecht, Chris Meuleman, Willy Vandeweghe, Mike Hinderdael, Bernard Vandenheede en Kristof Wybraeke. A project that illustrates its capacities in the field of dissemination and its experience in working with the coordinating partner of the present proposal is Uruk, a research project supported by the IWT, Instituut voor de Aanmoediging van Innovatie door Wetenschap en Technologie in Vlaanderen, Project no. 10136, in cooperation with Hogeschool Gent’s Centre for Applied Research and Services and the Laboratory for Applied Epistemology at Ghent University. Its aim is the development of an electronic knowledge management tool that retrieves causal relations in documents on the basis of a thesaurus.

Ghent Translation and Interpreting College experience in the domain of international cooperation is illustrated by means of its participation in: IP Screen Translation, an EU-sponsored project within the framework of the Socrates/Erasmus programme in cooperation with Universidad de Salamanca (Spain), University of Helsinki/Kouvola (Finland), Johannes Gutenberg-Universität at Mainz/Germersheim (Germany), and the University of Iceland at Reykjavik and a JEP-project on business languages involves both ROSI Kursk and the University of Edinburgh.

For the last ten years, the College has produced 36 books, 53 articles in refereed international academic journals, 40 chapters in books with an international character and 25 articles in proceedings of international conferences.

The interpreting process has been the object of investigation both by former and present colleagues for years. André Brisau, Rita Godijns, Chris Meuleman, Mike Hinderdael en Sonia Vandepitte have all published in the field.

The role of the Department for Translation Studies within this project will embrace self-assessment / assessment, interpreter/vocational training and dissemination/exploitation.

The Philosophical Faculty from the University of Olomouc offers single-subject full-time Magister’s degree studies in the fields of: Czech Philology, Spanish Philology, History, Musicology, Psychology, the Theory and History of the Dramatic Arts, the Theory and History of the Visual Arts, Political Science and European Studies.Within full-time Magister studies students can choose amongst others Philology (English, Czech, Chinese, French, Italian, Japanese, Latin, German, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish).

Graduates of magister’s degree studies with a good capacity for research work can be admitted for post-graduate doctoral studies in one of the following fields: Czech Language, Czech Literature, French Literature, Romance Languages, German Language, German Literature, English and American Literature, English Language, Russian Language, Polish Language, History - Czech and Slovak History, General History, Auxiliary Historical Sciences, Political Science, Sociology, Clinical Psychology, Pedagogical Psychology, Andragogics, Theory of Literature, Theory and History of Literature, Theatre and Film, Theory and History of Fine Arts, Theory and History of Music.

The Faculty also provides courses for international students. The Summer School of Slavic Languages has a long tradition and a very good reputation.

The University of Olomouc and its language department will have the role of self-assessment / assessment, interpreter & vocational training and exploitation & dissemination.