[EDLING:1171] CFP: Resource-Scarce Language Engineering

[Francis M. Hult]

1ST CALL FOR PAPERS (9 January, 2006)
Resource-Scarce Language Engineering
http://altiplano.emich.edu/resource_scarce/
31 July - 4 August, 2006

organized as part of the
European Summer School on Logic, Language and Information
ESSLLI 2006 http://esslli2006.lcc.uma.es/
31 July - 11 August, 2006 in Málaga

Workshop Organizer:
  Edward Garrett <egarrett at emich.edu>
  
Workshop Purpose:
  This workshop will bring together scientists from academia and
  industry, as well as advanced PhD students, to present and discuss 
  research on the theoretical and practical challenges of engineering 
  resource-scarce languages. We intend to provide an inclusive forum
  for exchanging ideas on a broad range of topics in areas represented
  by ESSLLI, including basic text processing, speech analysis, and
  machine translation.
  
Workshop Topics:
  Seen through one lens, "resource-scarce languages" are languages 
  for which few digital resources exist; and thus, languages whose 
  computerization poses unique challenges. Through another lens, 
  "resource-scarce languages" are languages with limited financial, 
  political, and legal resources, languages that lack the clout or 
  global importance of the world's major languages.

  In spite of these challenges, resource-scarce languages and 
  their speakers are not being ignored. Individuals, governments, 
  and companies alike are busy developing technologies and tools 
  to support such languages. They are driven by a variety of
  motivations - from the desire among academics and community 
  activists to preserve or revitalize endangered or threatened 
  languages - to the desire by governments to promote minority 
  languages - to the need by other governments to detect hostile 
  chatter in diverse tongues - to the strategy of some companies to 
  enhance their stature in emerging markets such as China and 
  South America.

  Recognizing the above trend, this workshop will serve as a forum 
  for the discussion of academic and industrial research on resource-
  scarce language engineering. Possible topics include but are not 
  limited to:

    - multilingual text processing and the Unicode Standard
    - machine translation and speech recognition with minimal 
      training data
    - rapid portability of existing language technologies to new languages
    - the use of multilingual resources for monolingual annotation
    - the annotation of new language data on the basis of knowledge 
      of related languages
    - coping with data of inconsistent or uneven quality or coverage

  In addition, there will be a shared task on a specific resource-
  scarce language - Tibetan (details to be announced separately).

Submission Details:
  Authors are invited to submit a paper describing completed work
  in the area of the workshop. Each submission will be read by at least
  two members of the program committee, and will be evaluated 
  according to its scientific merit, its relevance to the workshop, and
  the degree to which its ideas are expressed fully yet concisely.
  Submissions of any length will be accepted, but acceptable formats
  are limited to postscript and pdf. Papers sent in other formats will be
  subject to immediate disposal. Please send your submission electronically 
  to <egarrett at emich.edu> by the deadline listed below. Accepted
  papers will appear in the workshop proceedings published by ESSLLI.
  
Workshop Format:
  This workshop is part of ESSLLI and is open to all ESSLLI 
  participants.  It will consist of five 90-minute sessions held over 
  five consecutive days in the first week of ESSLLI.  There will be 
  at least 2-3 slots for paper presentation and discussion plus one 
  invited talk per session. On the first day the workshop organizer 
  will give a general introduction to the topic.
  
Invited Speakers:
  Tom Emerson, Basis Technology Corporation
  John Goldsmith, University of Chicago
  Rada Mihalcea, University of North Texas
  Richard Sproat, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Cathy Wissink, Microsoft Corporation

Workshop Programme Committee:
  Deborah Anderson, University of California, Berkeley
  Emily Bender, University of Washington
  Steven Bird, University of Melbourne
  Alan W. Black, Carnegie Mellon University
  Sean Fulop, California State University, Fresno
  Andrew Hardie, Lancaster University
  Baden Hughes, University of Melbourne
  William Lewis, University of Washington
  Steven Loomis, IBM
  Joel Martin, National Research Council, Canada
  Mike Maxwell, University of Maryland
  Tony McEnery, Lancaster University
  Manuela Noske, Microsoft Corporation
  Charles Schafer, Johns Hopkins University
  Tanja Schultz, Carnegie Mellon University

Important Dates: 
  Submissions        : April 7, 2006
  Notification       : April 28, 2006
  Full paper deadline: May 19, 2006
  Final program        : June 30, 2006
  Workshop Dates     : July 31 - August 4, 2006
  
Local Arrangements:
  All workshop participants including the presenters will be
  required to register for ESSLLI.  The registration fee for 
  authors presenting a paper will correspond to the early 
  student/workshop speaker registration fee.  Moreover, a number
  of additional fee waiver grants might be made available by 
  the local organizing committee on a competitive basis and 
  workshop participants are eligible to apply for those. 
  
  There will be no reimbursement for travel costs or accommodation.
  Workshop speakers who have difficulty in finding funding 
  should contact the local organizing committee to ask for the 
  possibilities of a grant. 
  
Further Information:
  About the workshop: http://altiplano.emich.edu/resource_scarce/
  About ESSLLI: http://esslli2006.lcc.uma.es/