37.3281, Confs: SilkRoadNLP 2027: Advancing NLP for the Iranian Language Family (Greece)

Tue Oct 13 10:05:01 UTC 2026

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-3281. Tue Oct 13 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.3281, Confs: SilkRoadNLP 2027: Advancing NLP for the Iranian Language Family (Greece)

Moderator: Steven Moran (linguist at linguistlist.org)
Managing Editor: Valeriia Vyshnevetska
Team: Helen Aristar-Dry, Daniel Swanson
Jobs: jobs at linguistlist.org | Conferences: callconf at linguistlist.org | Pubs: pubs at linguistlist.org

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

Editor for this issue: Valeriia Vyshnevetska <valeriia at linguistlist.org>

================================================================

Date: 10-Oct-2026
From: Karine Megerdoomian [info at silkroadnlp.org]
Subject: SilkRoadNLP 2027: Advancing NLP for the Iranian Language Family

SilkRoadNLP 2027: Advancing NLP for the Iranian Language Family
Short Title: SilkRoadNLP 2027
Theme: From Representation to Sovereignty: AI for Iranian Languages

Date: 09-Mar-2027 - 14-Mar-2027
Location: Athens, Greece
Meeting URL: https://www.silkroadnlp.org/

Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics; Language
Documentation; Text/Corpus Linguistics; Typology
Subject Language(s): Central Pashto (pst, cent1973)
                     Kurdish (kur)
                     Ossetian (oss, iron1242)
                     Persian (fas)
                     Tajik (tgk, taji1245)
Language Family(ies): Iranian (iran1269)

Submission Deadline: 15-Dec-2026

Overview:
SilkRoadNLP 2027 provides a platform for advancing Natural Language
Processing (NLP), computational linguistics, and AI for the Iranian
linguistic family—a diverse group of languages spoken across Iran,
Afghanistan, Central and South Asia, and the Caucasus, as well as
diaspora communities worldwide. We welcome work that bridges
computational methods with linguistic, social, and cultural
perspectives.
Despite major advances in multilingual NLP and large language models,
the languages of the Iranian linguistic group remain underrepresented
in mainstream research. While Persian has received some attention,
many languages and varieties of the Iranian language family such as
Kurdish, Balochi, Gilaki, Mazandarani, Luri, Pashto, Ossetic, Talysh,
Zazaki, and others, continue to have limited digital presence,
computational resources, benchmarks, and system support. Many are
minority or endangered languages at risk of further technological
marginalization. Within Persian, Iranian Persian, Dari, and Tajik
differ in orthography, phonology, lexicon, and sociolinguistic
context, with Tajik also differing in script.
Building on the inaugural workshop at EACL 2026, SilkRoadNLP continues
its mission as a dedicated ACL-affiliated venue for computational
research on the Iranian language family. The workshop aims to:
1. Highlight advances in NLP analysis, datasets, benchmarks, models,
and language technologies.
2. Increase the visibility of Iranian languages and varieties
underrepresented in mainstream NLP and AI.
3. Address linguistic, cultural, sociopragmatic, and representational
challenges in computational research.
4. Foster collaboration across computational linguistics, linguistics,
digital humanities, language documentation, education, and AI
governance.
5. Build a sustained international research community and shared
ecosystem of resources for Iranian-language NLP.
We welcome research on all languages of the Iranian linguistic family,
including contemporary, historical, regional, minority, endangered,
heritage, and diaspora varieties.
2027 Theme: From Representation to Sovereignty: AI for Iranian
Languages
This year’s theme moves beyond asking whether Iranian languages are
represented in NLP and AI to examine how they are represented, who
participates in developing the technologies around them, who governs
linguistic and cultural data, and how language communities can retain
meaningful agency over AI systems. We especially welcome work on
community-centered NLP, culturally grounded evaluation, data and
language sovereignty, participatory development, and responsible AI
across the development lifecycle. The workshop also aims to lay the
groundwork for a collaborative Sovereign AI agenda for the Iranian
linguistic family. The theme complements the workshop’s broad scope.
Contributions across Iranian-language NLP are welcome, whether or not
they directly address the annual theme.
Topics of Interest:
We invite submissions on any aspect of NLP, computational linguistics,
or AI relevant to the Iranian linguistic family, including
contemporary, historical, regional, minority, endangered, heritage,
and diaspora varieties. Topics include, but are not limited to:
- Computational linguistic analysis of Iranian languages: morphology,
syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and typology.
- Resource creation, including corpora, benchmarks, and lexicons;
language documentation and annotation.
- Speech and multimodal processing, including automatic speech
recognition, text-to-speech, and multimodal learning.
- OCR, digitization tools, and script technologies.
- Language modeling and LLM adaptation, fine-tuning, and evaluation
across domains.
- NLP for historical and extinct Iranian languages, such as Pahlavi,
Avestan, and Sogdian, including applications in digital humanities and
cultural heritage.
- NLP for regional varieties, dialects, heritage languages, and
minority and endangered languages.
- Machine translation, transliteration, and cross-script processing.
- Evaluation frameworks, benchmarks, and shared tasks.
- Educational applications and language learning tools.
- Culturally grounded and sociopragmatic evaluation of language
technologies.
- Community-centered NLP, participatory development, and collaboration
with language communities.
- Data and language sovereignty, community agency, and governance of
linguistic and cultural resources.
- Ethical and responsible AI across the language technology
development lifecycle.
- Downstream and applied NLP, including information extraction,
sentiment analysis, misinformation detection, information retrieval,
social media analytics, and health and legal applications.
Contributions need not directly address the annual theme; we welcome
work across the full range of Iranian-language NLP.
Shared Task: Tajik Cyrillic <-> Perso-Arabic Transliteration
SilkRoadNLP 2027 will introduce a shared task on transliteration
between Tajik Cyrillic and Perso-Arabic scripts. Building on an
existing aligned dataset and established evaluation metrics, the task
will provide a common benchmark for comparing transliteration systems
and establishing reproducible baselines and state-of-the-art
performance. The shared task aims to advance tool development and
standardization for cross-script processing within the Iranian
language family.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

********************** LINGUIST List Support ***********************
Please consider donating to the Linguist List, a U.S. 501(c)(3) not for profit organization:

https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=87C2AXTVC4PP8

LINGUIST List is supported by the following publishers:

Australian Linguistics Society https://als.asn.au/Home

Bloomsbury Publishing http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/

Cambridge University Press http://www.cambridge.org/linguistics

Cascadilla Press http://www.cascadilla.com/

De Gruyter Brill https://www.degruyterbrill.com/?changeLang=en

Edinburgh University Press http://www.edinburghuniversitypress.com

European Language Resources Association (ELRA) http://www.elra.info

John Benjamins http://www.benjamins.com/

Language Science Press http://langsci-press.org

MDPI Languages https://www.mdpi.com/journal/languages

MIT Press http://mitpress.mit.edu/

Multilingual Matters http://www.multilingual-matters.com/

Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG http://www.narr.de/

Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics / Landelijke (LOT) http://www.lotpublications.nl/

Peter Lang AG http://www.peterlang.com

SIL International Publications http://www.sil.org/resources/publications

University of Toronto Press http://www.utpjournals.com/

----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-37-3281
----------------------------------------------------------