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With the understanding that advances in language technology may
affect and reflect language policy, and vice-versa, here is info on
a workshop on the more technical side of the ecology, which is being
organized by TALAf (Traitement automatique des langues africaines).
It will be held in Paris on July 4, 2016, as part of the combined
JEP-TALN-RECITAL conference.<br>
<br>
The primary language of the workshop is French, but English
submissions are accepted. The English version of the updated CFP
follows (it includes some policy-relevant details, btw); the French
version can be accessed at <a
href="http://talaf.imag.fr/2016/atelierTALAf2016v7.pdf"
target="_blank"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://talaf.imag.fr/2016/">http://talaf.imag.fr/2016/</a><wbr>atelierTALAf2016v7.pdf</a><br>
<br>
Questions should go to Mathieu Mangeot at <a
href="mailto:mathieu.mangeot@imag.fr" target="_blank">mathieu.<span
class="il">mangeot</span>@imag.fr</a> <br>
<br>
===================<br>
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font
style="font-size:12pt"><b>TALAf
2016 : Traitement automatique des langues africaines (écrit
et
parole)</b></font></font></font><font color="#000000"><font
face="Times New Roman, serif"><font style="font-size:12pt"><b><br>
<br>
Atelier
JEP-TALN-RECITAL 2016 - Paris le 4 juillet 2016</b></font></font></font>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New
Roman',serif;line-height:100%"><b><font color="#941100">Nouveau
: DATE LIMITE : 8 mai 2016</font></b></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%"><span
style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New
Roman',serif;line-height:100%">Version HTML : <a
href="http://talaf.imag.fr/" target="_blank"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://talaf.imag.fr/">http://talaf.imag.fr/</a></a></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%">Version PDF : <a
href="http://talaf.imag.fr/2016/atelierTALAf2016v7.pdf"
target="_blank"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://talaf.imag.fr/2016/">http://talaf.imag.fr/2016/</a><wbr>atelierTALAf2016v7.pdf</a></p>
<br>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%"><font
color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font
style="font-size:12pt"><b>PRESENTATION</b></font></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%"><span lang="en-US">TALAf
workshops
take place every two years. The first workshop was held
during the JEP-TALN-RÉCITAL 2012 conference on June 8, 2012 in
Grenoble (see proceedings: </span><a
href="http://aclweb.org/anthology//W/W12/#1300" target="_blank"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://aclweb.org/anthology//">http://aclweb.org/anthology//</a><wbr>W/W12/#1300</a><span
lang="en-US">).
The second one took place during the TALN 2014 conference on
July 1,
2014 in Marseille (see proceedings:
</span><a
href="http://www.taln2014.org/site/actes-en-ligne/actes-en-ligne-ateliers/"
target="_blank"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.taln2014.org/site/">http://www.taln2014.org/site/</a><wbr>actes-en-ligne/actes-en-ligne-<wbr>ateliers/</a><span
lang="en-US">).</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">The
third edition of TALAf will be held during the JEP-TALN-RECITAL
conference, on July 4, 2016 at INALCO in Paris.
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://jep-taln2016.limsi.fr/">https://jep-taln2016.limsi.fr/</a></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" align="justify"
lang="en-US">
Natural language processing is booming in Africa. Indeed, in many
countries, there is an ongoing official recognition of national
languages, for instance:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" align="justify"
lang="en-US"> In Niger, laws defining alphabets for Hausa,
Kanuri, and Tamajaq Zarma were published in 1999. Since then,
the National Assembly has set up simultaneous translation of
the debates in three languages: French, Hausa and Zarma;</p>
</li>
<li>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" align="justify"
lang="en-US"> In Morocco, the Royal Institute of Amazigh
Culture (IRCAM), which works for the promotion of Amazigh
culture and development of the Berber language was founded by
royal decree in 2001;</p>
</li>
<li>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" align="justify"
lang="en-US"> In Senegal, the recognition of national
languages of the recognition was mentioned in the first
article of the Constitution of 7 January 2001: "The official
language of the Republic of Senegal is French. The national
languages are Diola, Malinke, Pular, Serer, Soninke, Wolof and
other national language to be codified." The Department of
Technical Education, Vocational Training, Literacy and
National Languages (METFPALN) is responsible for this. Since
December 9, 2014, the Senegalese parliamentarians debates are
translated simultaneously through an interpretation system in
six national languages (Fulani, Serere, Wolof, Jola, Mandinka
and Soninke) in addition to French, allowing the majority of
members to speak in their mother tongue.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" align="justify"
lang="en-US">
Moreover, a number of colleagues / African scholars trained in the
North return to their country with the will to continue their work
in
local languages. There are also some Diasporas that have
technological material allowing them to contribute directly online
and on a voluntary basis.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" align="justify"
lang="en-US">
Added to this, the development of bilingual education programs
(official / national language) in primary schools in many
countries
is growing. The official language remaining mostly that of the
former
colonial country (French, English, Portuguese ...).</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" align="justify"
lang="en-US">
On the other hand, mobile phones are spreading fast: with 650
million
units, Africa has surpassed the United States and Europe. In many
areas, it is easier to install a mobile antenna than fixed lines.
Therefore, the people who use a telephone for the first time do it
with a mobile terminal. Applications are developed such as money
transfer or dissemination of weather reports.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" align="justify"
lang="en-US">
The funding of research projects on these languages can now be
obtained from the "Organisation Internationale de la
Francophonie" with their calls for projects of the "fonds
francophone des inforoutes" (see eg <span
style="background-position:initial
initial;background-repeat:initial initial"><a
href="http://www.dilaf.org/" target="_blank">DiLAF</a>
o</span><span style="background-position:initial
initial;background-repeat:initial initial">r</span><span
style="background-position:initial
initial;background-repeat:initial initial">
<a
href="http://pagesperso.lina.univ-nantes.fr/info/perso/permanents/enguehard/flore/"
target="_blank">flore</a></span>
projects) or the "Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie".
France also supports projects on these languages through the
National
Agency for Research (see eg <a href="http://alffa.imag.fr/"
target="_blank">ALFFA</a>
project).</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">So
the conditions are gathered for the development of natural
language
processing in Africa, both written and spoken.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">In
this context, the roles of TALAf workshop are:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">
bring together researchers in the field through meetings at
the workshop but also with the <a href="mailto:talaf@imag.fr"
target="_blank">talaf@imag.fr</a> mailing list;</p>
</li>
<li>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">
pooling knowledge using open source tools, standards (ISO,
Unicode), and publishing the resources produced with an open
license (Creative Commons) to avoid including the loss of
information when a project stops and can not be resumed
immediately for lack of resources;</p>
</li>
<li>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">
develop a set of best practices based on the experience of
researchers ; set up simple efficient methodologies based on
free or very cheap software for the development of resources,
exchange about techniques that can avoid the use of
non-existent resources and finally avoid loss of time and
energy.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%"><span lang="en-US">TALAf
workshops
are supported by the non-profit organisation "Lexicologie
Terminologie Traduction": </span><a
href="http://www.ltt.auf.org/index.php" target="_blank"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.ltt.auf.org/index">http://www.ltt.auf.org/index</a>.<wbr>php</a></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" align="justify"
lang="en-US">
<span style="background-position:initial
initial;background-repeat:initial initial">We invite all
researchers in
natural language processing working on African languages,
including
Creole languages of Africa, whether written or oral, to submit a
paper to this workshop.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US"><b>TYPES
OF
COMMUNICATION</b></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" align="justify"
lang="en-US">
<span style="background-position:initial
initial;background-repeat:initial initial">Publications should
contain
between 6 and 12 pages. Authors are invited to submit papers
presenting original research particularly on the themes listed
below.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" align="justify"
lang="en-US">
<span style="background-position:initial
initial;background-repeat:initial initial">French speaking
authors are
invited to write in French with a summary in the language of
their
choice. Non-French speaking writers can write in English with a
summary in French and another in the language of their choice.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US"><b>TOPICS</b></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">The
workshop is open to research works on the following topics:</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">Resources:
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US"> •
written corpora (monolingual, bilingual aligned or comparable)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US"> •
speech corpora (including transcription)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US"> •
lexicons, dictionaries and databases (monolingual, bilingual,
multilingual)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US"> •
resources enrichment</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US"> •
resources quality evaluation</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">Tools:</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US"> •
morphological analyzers, spell-checkers</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US"> •
syntactic analyzers, grammar checkers</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US"> •
machine translation systems<span
style="background-position:initial
initial;background-repeat:initial initial">
(</span><span style="background-position:initial
initial;background-repeat:initial initial">empirical</span> or
rule-based)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US"> •
speech recognition</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US"> •
text-to-speech synthesis</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US"> •
transliteration</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US"><b>SELECTION
CRITERIA</b></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">Submissions
will
be reviewed by at least two specialists of the domain.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">The
following points will be taken into account:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">
adequacy to the workshop topics</p>
</li>
<li>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">
importance and originality of the contribution,</p>
</li>
<li>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">
scientific and technical content precision,</p>
</li>
<li>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">
organisation and clarity of the presentation.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US"><b>SUBMISSIONS</b></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">The
submission formats will be available for OpenOffice, Word and
Latex
and accessible from: </p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%"><a
href="https://jep-taln2016.limsi.fr/styles/jeptaln2016-v2.zip"
target="_blank"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://jep-taln2016.limsi.fr/">https://jep-taln2016.limsi.fr/</a><wbr>styles/jeptaln2016-v2.zip</a><span
lang="en-US">
</span>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">The
communication proposals must be sent in PDF format to the
following
address:</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%"><a
href="https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=taln2016"
target="_blank"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://easychair.org/">https://easychair.org/</a><wbr>conferences/?conf=taln2016</a></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US"><b>PROGRAMME
COMMITTEE</b></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">Martine
Adda-Decker (CNRS-LPP & LIMSI, Paris, France)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">Laurent
Besacier (LIG, Grenoble, France)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">Sokhna
Bao Diop (Université Gaston Berger, St Louis du Sénégal, Sénégal)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">Philippe
Bretier
(Voxygen, Pleumeur-Bodou, France)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">Khalid
Choukri (ELDA, Paris, France)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">Mame
Thierno Cissé (ARCIV, Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar, Sénégal)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">Chantal
Enguehard (LINA, Nantes, France)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">Núria
Gala (LIF, Marseille, France)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">Modi
Issouf (Ministère de l'Éducation, Niamey, Niger)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">Fary
Silate Ka (IFAN, Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar, Sénégal)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">Mathieu
<span class="il">Mangeot</span> (LIG, Grenoble, France) </p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">Chérif
Mbodj, (Centre de Linguistique Appliquée de Dakar, Sénégal)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">Kamal
Naït-Zerrad (INALCO, Paris, France)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">El
Hadj Mamadou Nguer (Université Gaston Berger, St Louis du Sénégal,
Sénégal)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">Donald
Osborn (Bisharat, ltd.)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">Francois
Pellegrino,
(DDL, Lyon, France)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">Olivier
Rosec (Voxygen, Pleumeur-Bodou, France)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">Fatiha
Sadat (UQAM, Montréal, Canada)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">Aliou
Ngoné Seck (FLSH, Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar, Sénégal)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">Emmanuel
Schang
(Université d'Orléans, Orléans, France)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">Gilles
Sérasset (LIG, Grenoble, France)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">Max
Silberztein (ELLIADD, Université de Franche-Comté, Besançon,
France)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">Sylvie
Voisin (DDL, Lyon, France)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">Valentin
Vydrin
(LLACAN-INALCO, Paris, France)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US"><b>IMPORTANT
DATES</b></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">-
Submission deadline: 8 May 2016</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">-
Notification of acceptance: 23 May 2016</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" lang="en-US">-
Final Submission Deadline: 3 June 2016</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:100%" align="left"
lang="en-US">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font
style="font-size:12pt">-
Workshop: 4 July 2016</font></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:14px"><b>CONTACT</b></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:14px">- For any question,
please contact <a href="mailto:mathieu.mangeot@imag.fr"
target="_blank">mathieu.<span class="il">mangeot</span>@imag.fr</a>
<br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.1cm;line-height:14px"><br>
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