ELRA News - Arabic LRs & Tools Conference

[Magali Jeanmaire]

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Arabic Language Resources and Tools Conference
	22-23 September 2004, Cairo, Egypt
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An international conference on Arabic Language Resources
and Tools will take place in Cairo, Egypt.

The main organiser of the conference is the NEMLAR
consortium. The local organiser is RDI Egypt.

Venue: Hotel Helnan Shepheard, Cairo, Egypt
Project and conference web site: http://www.nemlar.org

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Conference aims
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Language Resources (LRs) are recognised as a central component
of the linguistic infrastructure, necessary for the development of HLT
applications and products, and therefore for industrial development.

In this conference, we will focus on Arabic language technology and
on the necessary language resources and tools for both research and
commercial development of language technology for Arabic. Multilingual
language technology is also in the focus, as well as general methodologies.
Evaluation of modules and systems is another field which is closely related
to language resources, because language resources are used to perform
the evaluation. Consequently we also invite papers in this area.

Substantial mutual benefits are achieved by addressing these issues
through international collaboration. For this reason, the conference is
organised at the international level.

The aim of this conference is to provide an overview of the state-of-the-art
for Arabic resources and tools, discuss problems and opportunities,
exchange information regarding LRs, their applications, ongoing and
planned activities, industrial uses and needs, requirements coming from
the new e-society, both with respect to policy issues and to technological
and organisational ones.

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Conference topics
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- Issues in the design, construction and use of Arabic Language Resources (LRs)
- Issues in Human Language Technologies (HLT) evaluation
- Policy issues, international cooperation, strategies for the support of LR
- Exploitation of Arabic data for the development of language technologies

Please check the web site www.nemlar.org for the full Call text.

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Programme
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The Scientific Programme will include invited talks and oral presentations,
referenced demonstrations and panels.

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Abstract submission
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On-line submission forms will soon be available.
Please check the project and conference web pages, www.nemlar.org.

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Important dates
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- Submission of proposals for papers, referenced demos: 15 May 2004
- Notification of acceptance: 15 June 2004
- Final versions for the proceedings: 20 August 2004

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Programme chairs
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- Khalid Choukri, ELDA, Paris, France (co-chair)
- Bente Maegaard, CST, University of Copenhagen, Denmark (co-chair)

The programme committee, the scientific committee and the organising
committee are found on the project and conference web site.

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NEMLAR
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For more information about NEMLAR (Network for Euro-Mediterranean
LAnguage Resource and human language technology development and
support), please contact:

Bente Maegaard (co-ordinator)
Tel: + 45 35 32 90 90
Fax: + 45 35 32 90 89
Email: nemlar at cst.dk
Web: www.nemlar.org

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