Named Entity Recognition from Greek Texts: The GIE Project

Abstract

Todays’ overload of information, particularly through the World Wide Web, makes difficult the users’ access to the right information. The situation becomes even more difficult due to the fact that a lot of this information is in different languages. Therefore, it is important to apply an information process that will extract from all that volume of information only the facts that match users’ interests, and allow the user to access facts written in a different language. Information Extraction (IE) technology can meet these requirements, since unlike what happens with information retrieval and filtering technology, in IE the user interests are on specific facts extracted from the documents and not on the documents themselves. Some documents may contain the requested keywords but be irrelevant to the users’ interests. Working with specific facts instead of documents provides users information more relevant to their domain of interest. The IE systems developed so far, extract, in most cases, fixed information from documents in a fixed language. However, in order for the IE technology to be truly applicable in real life applications, meeting the above requirements, IE systems need to be easily adaptable (customisable) to new domains and users interests, as well as to multiple languages. During the last decade, substantial progress has been made in developing reliable Information Extraction (IE) technology. IE technology is currently exploited in real applications, such as the extraction of information for companies acquisitions [1],[2],[3], stock exchanges [4], companies profits and losses [5], joint ventures and management succession events [6],[7],[8], as well as for the understanding of military messages [9] and police reports [10],[11],[12].