FINAL Call for papers: Portability Issues in Human Language Technologies (focus on European minority languages) - REVISED DEADLINE 8 MARCH

[Scott McGinnis]

Final call for Papers

                     LREC 2002
        http://www.lrec-conf.org/lrec2002/
                    Workshop on

    Portability Issues in Human Language Technologies

    1st June 2002, Las Palmas, Canary Islands - Spain


Please note that the poster abstract submission deadline has been
extended through 8th March 2002.

The proposed workshop is intended to continue the series of SALTMIL
(ISCA SIG) http://isl.ntftex.uni-lj.si/SALTMIL/ LREC workshops related
to the integration of local and global languages ("Language Resources
for European Minority Languages" (LREC'98)) as well as the workshop on
"Developing Language Resources for Minority Languages: Re-usability and
Strategic Priorities" (LREC'00)).


IMPORTANT DATES

- Deadline for workshop abstract submission:
    8th March 2002
- Notification of acceptance:
    15th March 2002
- Final version of the paper for the workshop proceedings:
    8th April 2002
- Workshop:
    1st June 2002


MOTIVATION AND AIMS

There are more than 6000 languages in the world, yet only a small number
possess the resources required for implementation of Human Language
Technologies (HLT). This imbalance in technical resources available to
languages of the world is likely to result in a significant linguistic
divide that further exacerbates global social and economic inequities
unless decisive action is taken relatively soon. One potential means of
ameliorating this imbalance in technology resources is through
encouraging research in the portability of human language technology for
multilingual application.

Portability issues in HLT are important in the structuring and
acquisition of local language resources. The primary objective of the
workshop is to bring together participants from academia and industry to
discuss and disseminate the current state of the art in multilingual
research and development in the context of cross-language HLT transfer.
Major challenges for HLT-portability research will also be discussed.

The workshop will focus on the following topics and languages:
-       Linguistic corpora and portability (new models, language
        maps, novel systems for creating and managing multilingual
        data);
-       Automatic Speech Recognition (generic design in acoustic
        modelling, task portability, cross-language portability):
        -       Acoustic modelling (monolingual and multilingual
                modelling, cross-language transfer, finite state
                automata, decision trees and data-driven methods);
        -       Dictionary development (word-definition issues,
                automatic dictionary acquisition);
        -       Language modelling (the Internet as a linguistic
                resource, language modelling in spoken language
                processing).
-       Natural Language Processing (cross-language transfer of
        HLT):
        -       Parsing;
        -       Translation.


WORKSHOP AGENDA

        Oral Session: Portability Issues in HLT

14:30   Workshop Welcome and Introduction
        Bojan Petek

14:35   Multilingual Time Maps: Portable Phonotactic Models for
        Speech Technology
        Julie Carson-Berndsen

15:00   Automatic Phonetic and Prosodic Characterization of
        Spoken Language
        Steven Greenberg

15:25   Creating Re-usable Documentation for Little-studied
        Languages
        Steven Bird

15:50   Some Issues in Speech Recognizer Portability
        Lori Lamel

16:15 Break

        Oral Session: HLT and the Coverage of Languages

16:30   Challenges and Opportunities in Portability of Human
        Language Technologies
        Bojan Petek

16:55   Atlantis Project: Resources Available in the Internet
        to Serve Speakers and Learners of Minority Languages
        Salvador Climent Roca

17:20   Towards the definition of a basic toolkit for HLT
        Kepa Sarasola

17:45 Panel Discussion - Invited speakers will be included as
         panelist members.

18:15 Poster Session

20:00 End


WORKSHOP ORGANIZING AND PROGRAM COMMITTEE

- Julie Carson-Berndsen, University College Dublin, Dublin,
  Ireland
- Steven Greenberg, International Computer Science Institute,
  Berkeley, USA
- Bojan Petek, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
- Kepa Sarasola, University of the Basque Country, Donostia,
  Basque Country


SUBMISSION

Papers are invited that describe research and development in the area of
Human Language Technology portability. All contributed papers will be
presented in poster format. Each submission should include: title;
author(s); affiliation(s); and contact author's e-mail address, postal
address, telephone and fax numbers. Abstracts (maximum 500 words,
plain-text format) should be sent via email to:

Bojan Petek, bojan.petek at uni-lj.si

All contributed papers will be printed in the workshop proceedings.


WORKSHOP REGISTRATION FEES

The registration fees for the workshop are:
-       If you are not attending LREC: 70 EURO
-       If you are attending LREC: 45 Euro

These fees cover the following: a copy of the proceedings of the
attended workshop, coffee-breaks and refreshments.  Participation in the
workshop is limited by the venue. Requests for participation will be
processed on first come first served basis.  Registration will be
handled by the LREC Secretariat.