[Corpora-List] UCNLG+MT: Final Call for Abstracts for Special Session on MT & NLG

[Anja Belz]

*** Submission deadline: 1 July 2007 ***


UCNLG+MT - FINAL CALL FOR ABSTRACTS FOR SPECIAL SESSION ON NLG AND MT
=====================================================================

Using Corpora for NLG: Language Generation and MT (UCNLG+MT) is a
pre-conference workshop at MT Summit XI, to be held in Copenhagen, 11
September 2007.

There are many branches of NLP research where language is generated (MT,
summarisation, human-computer dialogue, data-to-text generation, document
authoring, etc.).  However, for the most part, these form separate
research communities and the field called "Natural Language Generation
(NLG)" is to some degree isolated from many of them.

The UCNLG workshops have the general aims

1. to provide a forum for reporting and discussing data-based
   methods for generating language in all areas of application;
2. to open up the NLG research field to neighbouring areas in NLP
   and to foster cross-fertilisation between these research fields;
   and
3. to promote the sharing of data in NLG and the use of data-based
   methods of evaluation.

The special theme of this second UCNLG workshop is Language Generation and
MT.  Target language generation is typically given less attention than
other aspects of MT, such as evaluation, source language analysis and
transfer.  Recently there has been increasing interest in combining
linguistic knowledge with statistical MT.  Conversely, NLG -- where
symbolic approaches have long dominated -- has seen increasing interest in
probabilistic methods. With this special theme, we would like to explore
crossover points and potential for cross-fertilisation between MT and NLG.

Invited Speaker:
----------------

Kevin Knight, ISI, University of Southern California, US, will present
the keynote address.


Discussion Session on Language Generation and MT:
-------------------------------------------------

There will be a discussion session on the special theme of the workshop,
Language Generation and Machine Translation.  It is intended as a
discussion forum where people can present short `opinion pieces' on the
special theme.  Possible topics include, but are by no means limited to,
the following:

* common research agenda for NLG and MT
* given the `more data is better data' mantra of statistical MT, what
  space is there for linguistically motivated generation?
* can a shared task be defined that would interest both NLG and MT
  researchers?
* data resources that can be shared between NLG and MT
* methods and tools that can be used for NLG and MT

We invite submissions of extended abstracts for this session which should
be up to 2 pages long and follow the ACL'07 guidelines using the style
files provided at http://ufal.mff.cuni.cz/acl2007/styles/. Abstracts
should be sent in PDF format by email to ucnlg at itri.brighton.ac.uk no
later than July 1. Submissions will be reviewed by at least two members of
the programme committee, to ensure appropriateness of content.  If there
are more submissions than we can accommodate, then the workshop organisers
will make a selection based on the reviews.  Extended abstracts will be
included in the workshop proceedings.


Proceedings:
------------

The proceedings of the workshop will be published by the MT Summit XI
conference organisers, in a companion volume to the main conference
proceedings.


Important Dates:
----------------

01 July           Submission deadline for extended abstracts for Discussion
                  Session on NLG and MT
09 July           Notification of acceptance to authors of extended abstracts
                  for Discussion Session on NLG and MT
20 July           Camera-ready copy from all authors
11 September      UCNLG+MT in Copenhagen


Programme Committee:
--------------------

Srinivas Bangalore, AT&T, USA
Stephan Busemann, DFKI, Germany
Robert Dale, Macquarie University, Australia
Kevin Knight, ISI, U of Southern California, USA
Irene Langkilde-Geary, Brigham Young University, USA
Chris Mellish, U of Aberdeen, UK
Jon Oberlander, U of Edinburgh, UK
Richard Power, Open University, UK
Flo Reeder, The Mitre Organisation, USA
Ehud Reiter, U of Aberdeen, UK
Amanda Stent, SUNY, USA
Michael Strube, EML Research, Germany
Kees van Deemter, U of Aberdeen, UK
Bonnie Webber, U of Edinburgh, UK
Mike White, Ohio State University, USA


Workshop organisers:
--------------------

Anja Belz, NLTG, University of Brighton, UK
Sebastian Varges, Information and Communication Technology, University of
Trento, Italy


Workshop website:
-----------------

http://www.nltg.brighton.ac.uk/ucnlg/