Although this is not in itself a translation system it is an essential element of a particular type of translation system, namely, a multilingual interlingual system. An interlingua is an artificial language which is required to be able to hold the complete and unambiguous meaning of statements made in a number of natural languages in order that they may then be translated into any one of the other natural languages.
 
An interlingua may be something similar to a natural language which can be spoken, written and read by people who have learnt how to do this, such as Esperanto. On the other hand, the UNL is more specifically designed to be used within computer systems in which translation between it and natural languages can be automated thus avoiding the need for people to learn it.
 
A multilingual interlingual system is especially attractive where the aim is to be able to translate automatically between a large number of languages, as for each additional language to be accommodated only two extra translation modules are needed, one to translate from the natural language to the interlingua and the other to translate from the interlingua to the natural language.
 
I think the UNL is particularly interesting for a number of reasons. First of all, it was conceived and constructed under the auspices of the United Nations at the United Nations University with the aim of providing the organisation with the basis of a universal automated translation system. Such a system would appear to be a highly desirable facility for an organisation such as the UN, and a lot of time and effort has been spent on it since work started on it over 10 years ago.
 
It is in an advanced stage of development and already being used in Language Centres in 14 different countries where dictionaries and translation programs are being written and tested.
 
It uses English words as the basis of constructing meanings, but is important not to think of it as a form of English. If you have a look at the system documentation I think you will see why this is so. However, this does make it easier for us (English speakers) to understand the meaning of UNL statements.
 
The main website is at http://www.undl.org.
 
Unfortunately, the software is not open source and the system has been patented in the USA so it would be difficult for us to contribute anything new to it. However, we should be able to use it.
 
The following Language Centres have websites with different levels of information about UNL but with some facilities for demonstrating and/or trying translation from UNL into one or more natural languages. Unfortunately availability is sometimes variable, so, if one does not work please try later or try another language.
 
Some of these Centres have some ready made examples which you can select. You can enter your own statements but this does some extra knowledge, particularly in relation to the current vocabulary. To give you a flavour of what these statements look like here is one which should produce "This is an example of UNL" in your selected language. I hope it does not put you off!
 
aoj (example(icl>functional thing).@entry.@indef,
this(icl>thing) )
 
mod (example(icl>functional thing).@entry.@indef,
UNL(equ>Universal Networking Language))
 
Unfortunately the structure of this won't show up very well within the textual limitations of an e-mail message. Basically we have two statements as follows,
 
aoj (example, this)
mod (example, UNL)
 
These statements are rather like program function calls, with aoj, mod, and many other "functions", which specify the relationship between the pair of semantic items within the brackets and which together produce a total meaning which, in conjunction with a Universal Dictionary, should be translatable into any natural language by a specific translation program for the language.
 
Here follow the details of four UNL Language Centres where we can test the translation of UNL statements into a natural language. I believe there could be others available but I have not tried them yet.

French Language Centre

Web: http://www-clips.imag.fr/geta/User/wang-ju.tsai/welcome.html

Click "resources" in "Experimentations"
Click "Detect the local server status"
Click "French" under "at Language centers" column

Web: http://www-clips.imag.fr/geta/User/wang-ju.tsai/decopages/decofr.html

Enter UNL code, or paste it in from somewhere else, for translation into French.

Contact: Wang-ju.tsai@imag.fr

Italian Language Centre

Web: http://unl.ilc.pi.cnr.it

Click "Italian Language Server"

Web: http://unl.ilc.pi.cnr.it/LSMain.htm

Select examples or enter UNL code for translation into Italian.

Contact: Irina.Prodanof@ilc.cnr.it

Russian Language Centre

Web: http://www.unl.ru

Click "Russian Language Server"

Web: http://www.unl.ru/server.html

Enter UNL code, or paste it in from elsewhere, for translation into Russian.

Contact: info@unl.ru

Spanish Language Centre

Web: http://www.unl.fi.upm.es/CLE/homepage.htm

Click "Spanish" or "English"

Web: http://www.unl.fi.upm.es/CLE/english/index.htm

Click "Spanish Language Center"

Web: http://www.unl.fi.upm.es/CLE/english/about.htm

Click "Objectives"

Web: http://www.unl.fi.upm.es/CLE/english/objectives.htm

Click "Spanish Language Server"

Web: http://www.unl.fi.upm.es/CLE/english/language_server.htm

Click "Enter"

Web: http://www.unl.fi.upm.es/CLE/english/lg_test.htm

Follow instructions to translate specimen text shown then Go back and click "here" to see more examples

Web: http://www.unl.fi.upm.es/CLE/english/fr_examples.htm

Select examples, or enter UNL code, for translation into Spanish

Contact: Carde@opera.dia.fi.upm.es

I hope you find the examples in these sites interesting and informative. To get the most out this exercise I recommend reading some of the UNL documentation at http://www.undl.org/unlsys/index.html as well.