Building a Multilingual Building a Multilingual Thesaurus for Agriculture, Thesaurus for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in Forestry and Fisheries in

JapanJapan

Building a Multilingual Building a Multilingual Thesaurus for Agriculture, Thesaurus for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in Forestry and Fisheries in

JapanJapan

Hiroko AOKIHiroko AOKIAgriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Research Information Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Research Information

Center (AFFRIC)/MAFFIN JapanCenter (AFFRIC)/MAFFIN Japan

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Background (1)Project on the Development of a Digital

Community(FY2001-FY2005) -Database mirroring ( FAO CDR database) -Library catalog ( research institute library) (2)Agropedia -Total information service system for

Agricultural researcher -Contents: Database ( Satellite ,

Bibliography, Web Archives) , Library Catalog

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Process • 2001.10-2003.12: translated AGROVOC

from English to Japanese

• 2003.12:created the provisional version of AGROVOC

Multilingual searching interface http://www2.affrc.go.jp/agent/searchtest.csp

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Process-2• 2003.12-2004.10: completed the final

version after reviewing and correcting the translated words.

• 2004.12: completed version and began to operate it officially.

http://www2.affrc.go.jp/agrovoc/condition.csp

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Current Status(1) Problems with

AGROVOCFrom a view point of Japanese users:• Terms related Asia monsoon climate regions (inc.

Japan)

• Terms pertinent to agricultural civil engineering, agricultural engineering, agricultural chemistry, or food processing

• Terms concerning Japanese traditional fermented

foods (ex. soybean paste :味噌、 soybean sauce:醤油）

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exampleSUIDEN(水田） (wet field for rice plantation) PADDY FIELD　　　 RICE FIELD(AGROVOC

Term) rice is also grown in dry field

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(2)Japanese Agriculture Thesaurus Project (FY 2004-2005)

Objecvite• to solve the problems with AGROVOC • expanding AGROVOC’s capacity by adding J

apanese agriculture, forestry and fisheries terms.

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Plan ( on going)2004:selected terms for each specialized

field from lexicons, technical dictionaries and glossaries produced by academic associations

2005:incorporate these terms into the information retrieval system following their integration and fine-tuning and the development of a thesaurus.

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Future Plan• Develop a multilingual thesaurus in collaboration

with FAO and 　 AGRIS resource centers located in other Asian countries (including the exchange of versions of AGROVOC in local languages).

• Make active use of a multilingual thesaurus for cross-file searching among databases disclosed in AGROPEDIA and on the Web

• Expand the multilingual thesaurus capacity• Build an ontological dictionary as an information

retrieval tool

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Thank youThank youThank youThank you

Contact:ric@affrc.go.jpContact:ric@affrc.go.jphttp://www.affrc.go.jphttp://www.affrc.go.jp

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