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<b>*****PLEASE NOTE DEADLINE EXTENSION FOR <br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>PAPERS
SUBMISSIONS TO NOVEMBER, 7TH*****<br>
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<x-tab> </x-tab><b><x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab>LREC
2004<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab>24-30
May 2004, Lisbon, Portugal<br>
<font size=4><x-tab> </x-tab><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab></font>In
memory of Antonio Zampolli<br>
<br>
</b><x-tab> </x-tab>Abstracts
submission forms available on-line:<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab><a href="http://www.lrec-conf.org/" eudora="autourl"><font color="#0000FF"><u>http://www.lrec-conf.org</a><br>
</u></font>****************************************************************************<br>
<br>
The fourth international conference on Language Resources and Evaluation,
<br>
LREC 2004, is organised by ELRA in cooperation with other
Associations<br>
and Consortia, including ACL, AFNLP, ALLC, ALTA, COCOSDA and
Oriental<br>
COCOSDA, EAFT, EAMT, ELSNET, ENABLER, EURALEX, GKS, GWA,<br>
IAMT,<font color="#FF0000"> </font>ICWLR, ISCA, LDC, ONTOWEB, TEI, and
with major national and<br>
international organisations, including the Commission of the EU -
Information<br>
Society DG, Unit E1 "Interfaces and Cognition”. <br>
Co-operation with other organisations is currently being sought.<br>
<br>
*** Location ***<br>
<br>
Centro Cultural de Belem, Lisbon, Portugal<br>
<br>
*** Dates ***<br>
<br>
- Pre-conference workshops: 24-25 May 2004<br>
- Main conference: 26-27-28 May 2004<br>
- Post-conference workshops: 29-30 May 2004<br>
<br>
*** Conference aims ***<br>
<br>
In the Information Society, the pervasive character of Human
Language<br>
Technologies (HLT) and their relevance to practically all fields of
Information<br>
Society Technologies (IST) has been widely recognised.<br>
<br>
Two issues are particularly relevant: the availability of Language
Resources<br>
(LRs) and the methods for the evaluation of resources, technologies,
products<br>
and applications. Substantial mutual benefits are achieved by
addressing<br>
these issues through international collaboration.<br>
<br>
The term “language resources” (LRs) refers to sets of language data
and<br>
descriptions in machine readable form, used in many types of
areas/components/<br>
systems/applications: <br>
- Creation and evaluation of natural language, speech and multimodal
algorithms and systems;<br>
- Software localisation and language services;<br>
- Language enabled information and communication services;<br>
- Knowledge management;<br>
- E-commerce, e-publishing, e-learning, e-government;<br>
- Cultural heritage;<br>
- Linguistic studies;<br>
- Etc.<br>
<br>
This large range of uses makes the LRs infrastructure a strategic part of
the e-society, <br>
where the creation of a basic set of LRs for all languages must be
ensured in order to<br>
bring all languages to the same level of usability and
availability.<br>
<br>
Examples of LRs are written or spoken corpora and lexica, which may be
annotated or not, <br>
multimodal resources, grammars, terminology or domain specific databases
and dictionaries,<br>
ontologies, multimedia databases, etc. LRs also cover basic software
tools for the acquisition, <br>
preparation, collection, management, customisation and use of the above
mentioned examples.<br>
<br>
The relevance of evaluation for language technologies development is
increasingly recognised. <br>
This involves assessing the state-of-the-art for a given technology,
measuring the progress<br>
achieved within a programme, comparing different approaches to a given
problem, assessing<br>
the availability of technologies for a given application, benchmarking,
and assessing system<br>
usability and user satisfaction.<br>
<br>
The aim of this conference is to provide an overview of the
state-of-the-art, discuss problems and<br>
opportunities, exchange information regarding LRs, their applications,
ongoing and planned activities,<br>
industrial uses and needs, requirements coming from the new e-society,
both with respect to policy<br>
issues and to technological and organisational ones. LREC will also
elaborate on evaluation<br>
methodologies and tools, explore the different trends and promote
initiatives for international<br>
collaboration in the areas mentioned above.<br>
<br>
*** Conference topics ***<br>
<br>
Examples of the topics which may be addressed by papers submitted to the
conference<br>
are given below.<br>
<br>
Issues in the design, construction and use of Language Resources
(LRs):<br>
- Guidelines, standards, specifications, models and best practices for
LRs;<br>
- Methods, tools and procedures for the acquisition, creation,
management, access, distribution<br>
and use of LRs;<br>
- Methods for the extraction and acquisition of knowledge (e.g. terms,
lexical information, language<br>
modelling) from LRs;<br>
- Organisational and legal issues in the construction, distribution,
access and use of LRs;<br>
- Availability and use of generic vs. task/domain specific LRs;<br>
- Definition and requirements for a Basic and Extended LAnguage Resource
Kit (BLARK, ELARK)<br>
for all languages;<br>
- Monolingual and multilingual LRs;<br>
- Multimedia and multimodal LRs. - Integration of various media and
modalities in LRs (speech, <br>
vision, language);<br>
- Documentation and archiving of languages, including minority and
endangered languages;<br>
- Ontologies and knowledge representation;<br>
- Terminology and NLP, tools and methodologies for terminology and
ontology building, term<br>
extraction, specialised dictionaries;<br>
- LRs for linguistic research in human-machine communication;<br>
- Exploitation of LRs in different types of applications (information
extraction, information retrieval, <br>
speech dictation, translation, summarisation, web services, semantic web,
etc.);<br>
- Exploitation of LRs in different types of interfaces (dialogue systems,
natural language and <br>
multimodal/multisensorial interactions, etc.);<br>
- Industrial LRs requirements, user needs and community's response;<br>
- Industrial production of LRs;<br>
- Industrial use of LRs;<br>
- Metadata descriptions of LRs.<br>
<br>
Issues in Human Language Technologies (HLT) evaluation:<br>
- Evaluation, validation, quality assurance of LRs,<br>
- Evaluation methodologies, protocols and measures,<br>
- Benchmarking of systems and products, resources for benchmarking and
evaluation, <br>
blackbox, glassbox and diagnostic evaluation of systems,<br>
- Usability and user experience evaluation, qualitative and perceptive
evaluation,<br>
- Evaluation in written language processing (document production and
management, text<br>
retrieval, terminology extraction, message understanding, text alignment,
machine translation, <br>
morphosyntactic tagging, parsing, semantic tagging, word sense
disambiguation, text<br>
understanding, summarisation, question answering, localisation,
etc.);<br>
- Evaluation in spoken language processing (speech recognition and
understanding, voice<br>
dictation, oral dialogue, speech synthesis, speech coding, speaker and
language recognition,<br>
spoken translation, etc.);<br>
- Evaluation of multimedia document retrieval and search systems
(including detection,<br>
indexing, filtering, alert, question answering, etc);<br>
- Evaluation of multimodal systems;<br>
- From evaluation to standardisation.<br>
<br>
General issues:<br>
- National and international activities and projects;<br>
- LRs and the needs/opportunities of the emerging industries;<br>
- LRs and contributions to societal needs (e.g. e-society);<br>
- Priorities, perspectives, strategies in national and international
policies for LRs;<br>
- Needs, possibilities, forms, initiatives of/for international
cooperation, and their organisational<br>
and technological implications;<br>
- Open architectures for LRs.<br>
<br>
The Conference targets the integration of different types of LRs (spoken,
written and other<br>
modalities) and of the respective communities. To this end, LREC
encourages submissions<br>
covering issues which are common to different types of Language
Technologies, such as<br>
dialogue strategy, written and spoken translation, domain-specific data,
multimodal<br>
communication or multimedia document processing, and will organise, in
addition to the<br>
usual tracks, common sessions encompassing the different areas of
LRs.<br>
<br>
*** Programme ***<br>
<br>
The Scientific Programme will include invited talks, oral presentations,
poster<br>
presentations, referenced demonstrations and panels. There is no
difference in quality<br>
between oral presentations and poster presentations. Only the
appropriateness of the<br>
type of communication to the content of the paper will be
considered.<br>
<br>
*** Abstract submission ***<br>
<br>
On-line submission forms are available. The forms can be accessed on the
LREC 2004<br>
web pages,
<a href="http://www.lrec-conf.org/lrec2004/index.php" eudora="autourl"><font color="#0000FF"><u>http://www.lrec-conf.org/lrec2004/index.php</a></u></font>,
where you can choose the appropriate<br>
one and submit paper, demonstration or poster abstracts. <br>
<br>
*** Workshops ***<br>
<br>
Pre-conference workshops will be organised on 24th and 25th May 2004, and
post-conference<br>
workshops on 29th and 30th May 2004. A workshop is normally either half
day or full day.<br>
<br>
The workshop proposers will be responsible for the organisational aspects
(e.g. workshop<br>
call preparation and distribution, review of papers, notification of
acceptance, assembling<br>
of the workshop proceedings, etc.). <br>
<br>
Proceedings will be printed for each workshop.<br>
<br>
*** Important dates ***<br>
<br>
- Submission of proposals for panels and workshops: 27th October
2003<br>
- Submission of proposals for oral and poster papers, referenced demos:
7th November 2003<br>
- Notification of acceptance of workshop and panel proposals: 14th
November 2003<br>
- Notification of acceptance of oral papers, posters, referenced demos:
23rd January 2004<br>
- Final versions for the proceedings: 1st March 2004<br>
<br>
- Conference: 26th, 27th and 28th May 2004<br>
- Pre-conference workshops: 24th and 25th May 2004<br>
- Post-conference workshops: 29th and 30th May 2004<br>
<br>
The proceedings of the conference will include both oral and poster
papers.<br>
<br>
Internet connections and various computer platforms and facilities will
be available<br>
at the conference site. In addition to referenced demos concerning LRs
and related<br>
tools, it will be possible to run unreferenced demos of language
processing products, <br>
systems and tools.<br>
<br>
Contact details are posted on
<a href="http://www.lrec-conf.org/" eudora="autourl">www.lrec</a><font color="#0000FF"><u>-conf<a href="http://www.lrec-conf.org/" eudora="autourl">.org</a></u></font>
if this opportunity interests you.<br>
<br>
*** Consortia and project meetings ***<br>
<br>
Consortia or projects wishing to take this opportunity for organising meetings should<br>
contact the ELDA office, lrec@elda.fr (further details are given at the end of the document).<br>
<br>
*** Conference registration fees ***<br>
<br>
1/ Early-bird registration fees, available until 20th February 2004:<br>
<br>
- Standard participant: 260 Euro<br>
- Participant from ELRA member organisation: 210 Euro<br>
- Student: 110 Euro<br>
<br>
2/ Registration fees after 20th February 2004:<br>
<br>
- Standard participant: 320 Euro<br>
- Participant from ELRA member organisation: 250 Euro<br>
- Student: 130 Euro<br>
<br>
2/ On-site registration fees:<br>
<br>
- Standard participant: 380 Euro<br>
- Participant from ELRA member organisation: 290 Euro<br>
- Student: 150 Euro<br>
<br>
The fees cover the following services: a copy of the proceedings, welcome reception,<br>
conference dinner, coffee-breaks and refreshments. <br>
<br>
*** Workshop registration fees ***<br>
<br>
1/ Workshop only participant: <br>
- 1/2 day: 85 Euro<br>
- Full day: 170 Euro<br>
<br>
2/ Workshop and Conference participant:<br>
- 1/2 day: 50 Euro<br>
- Full day: 100 Euro<br>
<br>
The fees cover the following services: a copy of the proceedings of the attended workshop,<br>
coffee-breaks and refreshments.<br>
<br>
*** Conference programme committee ***<br>
<br>
- Nicoletta Calzolari, Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale del CNR, Pisa, Italy (Conference Chair)<br>
- Khalid Choukri, ELRA, Paris, France<br>
- Teresa Lino, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal<br>
- Bente Maegaard, CST, Copenhagen, Denmark<br>
- Joseph Mariani, LIMSI-CNRS, Orsay, France<br>
- Jan Odijk, UIL-OTS, Utrecht, the Netherlands, and ScanSoft, Merelbeke, Belgium<br>
- Daniel Tapias, Telefonica Moviles, Madrid, Spain<br>
<br>
The composition of the committees as well as instructions and addresses for registration<br>
and accommodation will be detailed on the LREC web site at <a href="http://www.lrec-conf.org/" eudora="autourl">www.lrec-conf.org</a>.<br>
<br>
*** ELRA ***<br>
<br>
For more information about ELRA (European Language Resources Association), please contact:<br>
<br>
Khalid Choukri, ELRA CEO<br>
55-57 Rue Brillat-Savarin,<br>
75013 Paris - France<br>
Tel: + 33 1 43 13 33 33<br>
Fax: + 33 1 43 13 33 30<br>
Email: choukri@elda.fr<br>
Web: <a href="http://www.elra.info/" eudora="autourl">www.elra.info</a> or <a href="http://www.elda.fr/" eudora="autourl">www.elda.fr</a><br>
<br>
****************************************************************************<br>
The first LREC was organised in Granada (Spain) in 1998: 197 papers and posters were presented,<br>
with about 510 registered participants from 38 different countries from all continents. Among these,<br>
the largest group came from Spain (81 participants), followed by France (75), USA (73), Germany (47), <br>
UK (43) and Italy (41). Registered participants belonged to over 325 different organisations.<br>
<br>
LREC 2000, in Athens, had 129 oral papers and 152 posters presented, with around 600 participants<br>
from 51 different countries from all continents. Among these, the largest group came from Greece (117),<br>
followed by USA (70), France (59), Germany (45), UK (43), Japan (35) and Italy (29). <br>
Registered participants belonged to 319 different organisations.<br>
<br>
LREC 2002, which took place in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain), attracted over 700 representatives,<br>
coming from 38 countries around the world, who could take advantage of the numerous oral and poster<br>
presentations (around 365, covering every area in HLT).<br>
<br>
A similar number of participants is expected at LREC 2004.<br>
****************************************************************************<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
55-57, rue Brillat-Savarin <br>
75013 Paris FRANCE <br>
Tel: (+33) 1 43 13 33 33 / Fax: (+33) 1 43 13 33 30 <br>
URL: <a href="http://www.elra.info/" eudora="autourl"><font color="#0000FF"><u>http://www.elra.info</a></u></font> or <a href="http://www.elda.fr/" eudora="autourl"><u>http://www.elda.fr</a></u> <br>
<br>
LREC conference: <a href="http://www.lrec-conf.org/" eudora="autourl">http://www.lrec-conf.org</a> <br>
LangTech forum: <a href="http://www.lang-tech.org/" eudora="autourl">http://www.lang-tech.</a><a href="http://www.lang-tech.org/" eudora="autourl">org<br>
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