CfP: LTC Workshop on "Less Resourced Languages, new technologies, new challenges and opportunities", Poznan, Poland, 8 December 2013

[ELRA ELDA Information]

Dear Colleagues,

on behalf of the organizing Committee, I am pleased to announce the
third LTC Workshop on "Less Resourced Languages, new technologies, new
challenges and opportunities", to be held in conjunction with Language
Technology Conference in Poznan, Poland, on 8 December 2013.

General Conference website:http://www.ltc.amu.edu.pl/

Workshop Theme:

Many less resourced languages (LRL) that are thriving to get a place in
the digital space and that could profit of the new opportunities offered
by the Internet and digital devices will seriously face digital
extinction if they are not supported by Language Technologies. Language
Technologies (LTs, i.e. spelling and grammar checkers, electronic
dictionaries, localized interfaces, voice dictations, audio
transcriptions and subtitling, as well as multimedia/multimodal search
engines, language translators or information extraction tools) are
essential instruments to secure usability of less resourced languages
within the digital world, thus ensuring those languages equal
opportunities and raising their profile in the eyes of natives but also
non-natives from the younger, digitally-oriented generation. However,
there are many challenges to be faced to equip less resourced languages
with LTs (from basic to advanced): a substantial delay in development of
basic technologies, a lack of cooperation among languages communities, a
chronic shortage of funding (in particular for minority languages not
officially recognized, yet often the most vital ones over the Internet)
and the limited economic value placed over LTs for minority languages by
the market rules. At this critical time, this workshop seeks to continue
the debate as to what new technologies have to offer less resourced
languages, and how the research community might seek to overcome the
challenges and exploit the opportunities.

Paper submission deadline: 22 September 2013

We invite papers addressing the topics listed, but not limited to, the ones
below:

- Experiences in the development of digital applications for LRLs
- LRLs in educational and entertainment applications
- LRTs for securing access and inclusion to speakers of LRLs
- Development of LRs through crowdsourcing
- Youth-oriented applications for revitalisation of LRLs
- Experiences/models of cooperation for development of LRTs for LRLs
- Business models
- Gaps in availability of LRTs for LRLs
- Development of LTs when LRs are missing
- LR&Ts as a booster for the adoption of LRL within the digital world
- Lessons learnt from major recent infrastructure initiatives
- Infrastructures for making available LR and LT in all languages, and
especially in the less-resourced ones
- Assessing Availability, Quality, Maturity and Sustainability of LT and
LR , comparing the LRLs and the major ones
- Requirements for the production, validation and distribution of LR for
less-resourced languages


Program (general framework): The workshop will comprise presentations
(including keynote talks) and a panel session, including an EC
representative . The details of the program is in preparation and will
be published soon on the conference site.

Co-Chairs: Claudia Soria (CNR-ILC, Italy), Khalid Choukri (ELRA, ELDA,
France), Joseph Mariani (LIMSI-CNRS & IMMI, France), Zygmunt Vetulani
(Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland).

LRL Workshop Program Committee:

Delphine Bernhard (LILPA, Strasbourg University, France)
Nicoletta Calzolari (CNR-ILC, Italy)
Khalid Choukri (ELRA,ELDA, France)
Dafydd Gibbon (Universitat Bielefeld, Germany)
Marko Grobelnik (Josef Stefan Institute, Slovenia)
Alfred Majewicz (UAM, Poland)
Joseph Mariani (LIMSI-CNRS & IMMI, France)
Asunción Moreno (UPC, Spain)
Girish Nath Jha (Jawaharlal Nehru University, India)
Stelios Piperidis (ILSP, Greece)
Gabor Proszeky (Morphologic, Hungary)
Georg Rehm (DFKI, Germany)
Kepa Sarasola Gabiola (Pais Vasco University, Spain)
Kevin Scannell (St. Louis University, USA)
Claudia Soria (CNR-ILC, Italy)
Virach Sornlertlamvanich (NECTEC, Thailand)
Marko Tadic (University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social
Sciences, Croatia)
Marianne Vergez-Couret (Toulouse University, France)
Zygmunt Vetulani (UAM, Poland)

Paper submission: format and templates are the same as for the general
LTC; see the Workshop website for more information.

Papers should be submitted using EasyChair exactly as for the general
LTC but copies should also be sent to the co-chairs of the Workshop,
i.e. tochoukri at elda.org,Joseph.Mariani at limsi.fr,
claudia.soria at ilc.cnr.it  andvetulani at amu.edu.pl. Please also put
"LRL'13 submission" as Subject of your mail and "LRL" as a key word
(both in the EasyChair form and in the paper itself).

Best regards,

Claudia Soria (Workshop co-chair)