What is Entity Annotation?
Named entity datasets can help to train a machine learning model to understand the structure and meaning behind a piece of text. Although they are most closely linked to entity extraction models, entity annotation is also an extremely important preprocessing step for many other NLP tasks. Without the ability to recognize and understand entities, it would be nearly impossible to build models ranging from search relevance to content summarization. At Lionbridge, we’ve spent the last two decades building solutions that can locate and label entities in raw text data. Thanks to our annotators’ vast and detailed knowledge of language, we can handle a diverse range of entity annotation projects. Whether your classification system is simple or complex, we can ensure that every entity in your text is identified, labeled, and primed to improve your machine learning model.
Our Entity Annotation Platform

Whatever your entity types or formatting requirements, Lionbridge can build, annotate, and package named entity datasets that will drastically improve your model.
- 500,000+ Contributors
- 300+ Languages
- 20+ Years of experience
Expertise
From our professional linguists to our experienced solutions architects, we’ve spent two decades assembling the ultimate team for entity annotation.
Multilingual Services
Multilinguality is an essential part of Lionbridge’s being. We now have over 300 language specialisms – and counting.
Customizable Workflow
Use our versatile workbench for a hands-off experience, or let us build out a project workflow that suits you.

Our Entity Annotation Services
Named Entity Recognition
Using our custom platform and a crowd of professional linguists, Lionbridge identifies and annotates named entities in a wide variety of texts, at both the word and phrase level. Using our workbench, our annotators exhaustively locate and annotate the named entities in your data according to your unique taxonomy. By combining our annotator’s depth of knowledge with a technology-first approach and a rigorous quality assessment, we deliver named entity datasets that are clean, accurate, and ready to improve your entity extraction algorithm.
Keyphrase Tagging
We support our customers in the development of keyphrase extraction models through locating and tagging keywords in their text data. Lionbridge’s experienced annotators are adept at quickly and accurately identifying the segments that summarize your strings. Whether your focus is on text mining, information retrieval, or NLP, our annotated data will lay the foundations for a model with competitive precision and recall.
Topic Extraction
Before you can build a reliable topic extractor, it’s important to assemble a comprehensive dataset filled with relevant examples for training purposes. Our contributors use their vast linguistic experience to pinpoint key phrases in your strings, as well as further relevant keywords that don’t appear explicitly in the text. Comprehensively annotated and rigorously assessed, your newly-annotated data will play a key role in building out a range of topic models.
Inside-Outside-Beginning (IOB) Tagging
Our platform can automatically export your data into IOB2 format, allowing us to deliver chunked and annotated datasets that exceed the industry standard for both linguistic and semantic annotation tasks. Whatever your chunk phrase type, Lionbridge has the technology to make annotation a smooth and pain-free experience.
Part-of-Speech (POS) Tagging
Accurate NLP models require an in-depth understanding of not just semantics, but also syntax. Lionbridge’s contributors draw on their years of experience in linguistics to annotate your strings on either the word or phrase level. Our comprehensive tags will enable you to build an extensive parse tree and lay the foundations for a great NER model.
How does it work?

1. Project set-up
Our team work with you to develop a custom solution based on your project’s requirements, goals, and timeline.


2. Production
Our crowd of multilingual experts get to work annotating your text data according to your taxonomy.


3. Delivery
Our project management team checks, packages and formats the data before sending it to you for final approval.

WE SUPPLY THE WORLD'S LEADING COMPANIES WITH ENTITY ANNOTATION OUTSOURCING
Entity Annotation Pricing
Thanks to our platform, we’re able to streamline much of the entity annotation process – and offer one of the most cost-effective entity annotation solutions in the industry. Contact us to get a free estimate for your project.
- Account Manager
- Project Management
- 24/7 Support
- API
- NDA
- Volume pricing
- Custom reporting
- Enterprise-grade SLAs
- Custom invoicing
- Consulting services

Multilingual Entity Annotation Services
Lionbridge’s linguistic background makes us the developer’s choice for entity annotation services in over 300 languages. Some of our most popular languages include:
- Chinese entity annotation
- Dutch entity annotation
- French entity annotation
- German entity annotation
- Italian entity annotation
- Japanese entity annotation
- Portuguese entity annotation
- Spanish entity annotation