EXTENDED DEADLINE - LTC Workshop on "Less Resourced Languages, new technologies, new challenges and opportunities", Poznan, Poland, 8 December 2013

[Claudia Soria]

***Deadline extended to 6 October 2013***

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: 6 October 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. to choukri at elda.org, Joseph.Mariani at limsi.fr, 
claudia.soria at ilc.cnr.it and vetulani 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)

-- 
Claudia Soria

Researcher
Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale "A.Zampolli"
Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche
Area della Ricerca di Pisa San Cataldo
Via G. Moruzzi 1 - 56124 PISA (Italy)

phone: 	  +39-050-315-3166
fax:      +39-050-315-2839