Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
December 30, 2003

Dear SW List Members:
Some have asked me to re-post this information. I hope some of you can 
attend! Val ;-)

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Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages

30 may 2004
Lisbon, Portugal

Submission Date for Papers:
11 February 2004

http://dev.eurac.edu:8080/sign/index.html
http://conferences.atala.org/conferences/fiches/SignLP.html

The workshop will focus on the problem of representing sign languages
electronically in order to facilitate communication among the deaf as
well as between deaf and hearing people. Moreover, it will promote the
documentation and teaching of sign languages to both communities and
stimulate linguistic research on sign languages.

CALL FOR PAPERS

WORKSHOP ON THE REPRESENTATION AND PROCESSING OF SIGN LANGUAGES From
SignWriting to Image Processing. Information techniques and their
implications for teaching, documentation and communication.

Workshop on the occasion of the 4th International Conference on
Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2004)

Date: 30-May-2004 (at the closing of the main conference LREC 2004)
Location: Lisbon, Portugal

Linguistic Sub-field: SignWriting, Computational Linguistics, Corpus
Linguistics, Image Processing, Lexicography

Meeting Background

Sign Languages are the languages used by deaf communities for
non-written communication. This kind of linguistic codes relies on the
visual-gestural modality of communication. Sign languages all share
properties which do not exist in spoken languages, especially through
co-occurring sign elements.  For storing and retrieving information,
sign languages may be encoded and processed electronically. Different
techniques are possible and have been proposed.

The workshop will focus on the problem of representing sign languages
electronically in order to facilitate communication among the deaf as
well as between deaf and hearing people. Moreover, it will promote the
documentation and teaching of sign languages to both communities and
stimulate linguistic research on sign languages.

The task of transcribing these languages onto electronic media as a
main technique for storing, retrieving or communicating (email,
telephone, snake mail, children's e-book) is technically and
linguistically challenging. Recent advances in the field of corpus
linguistics, image processing and the development of XML standards,
promise to pave the way for a broader application of these
techniques. The workshop will set forth to provide an introduction
into the different approaches and techniques currently employed,
discuss their applications and respective advantages.

Preliminary Meeting program

30-May-2004

9:00-10:30: Presentations of invited talks
- Richard Gleaves (Deaf Action Committee For SignWriting)
- Thomas Hanke (Institute of German Sign language and Communication of
the Deaf University of Hamburg)
- Carol Neidle & Robert G. Lee (Department of Modern Foreign Languages
and Literatures, Boston University, Boston MA)

11:00-18:00: Oral presentations, poster presentations and demos

Call for papers

Papers are invited on substantial, original and unpublished research
on all aspects of sign language representation and processing,
including, but not limited to:

*sign writing
*corpus construction for sign languages
*sign language dictionaries
*sign language technologies
*e-learning of sign languages
*any topic related to sign language treatment and processing

Submissions of papers for oral and poster presentations should follow
the same style as the ones for regular LREC paper and not be longer
than 6000 words. The final details will be published as soon as they
become available.

Demonstrations and related tools will be reviewed as well. You should
send an outline of about 400 words. If a demo is connected to a paper,
please attach the outline to the paper.

The papers and demonstration outlines, written in English, should be
attached to an email message sent to the following address (ostreiter
at eurac dot edu). Please include the name and the affiliation of the
author(s) in the body of the email message.  The deadline for paper
submission is February 11th, 2004. Notice of acceptance or rejection
will be sent on February 24, 2004.

We allow simultaneous paper submission to the workshop and the LREC
main conference. If a paper is accepted by both the conference and the
workshop, the paper will be presented at the conference, rather than
at the workshop. The author(s) should notify the workshop chair.

Papers will be published in the proceedings of this workshop (each
workshop and the main conference have separate proceedings) and may,
depending on the conference politics, be included into the the main
conference CD-ROM.

Organizing Committee
- Antônio Carlos da Rocha Costa (Escola de Informática, Universidade
Católica de Pelotas, Brazil): rocha at atlas.ucpel.tche.br
- Carol Neidle (Department of Modern Foreign Languages and
Literatures, Boston University, Boston MA): carol at bu.edu
- Chiara Vettori (Language and Law, European Academy Bolzano, Italy):
cvettori at eurac.edu
- Christian Retoré (Laboratoire Bordelais de Recherche en
Informatique, France): retore at labri.fr
- Eva Safar (School of Computing Sciences, University of East Anglia,
Norwich, England): esafar at yahoo.com
- Ian Marshall (School of Computing Sciences, University of East
Anglia, Norwich, England): im at cmp.uea.ac.uk
- Marco Consolati (Cooperativa Alba , Torino, Italy):
bigmark at mclink.it
- Oliver Streiter (Language and Law, European Academy Bolzano, Italy):
ostreiter at eurac.edu
- Patrice Dalle (Équipe ''Traitement et Compréhension d'Images'',
IRIT - Université Paul Sabatier France): dalle at irit.fr

Important Dates

11 February 2004 : Deadline for paper submissions
25 February 2004 : Notification of acceptance to authors
**               : Deadline for Camera-ready papers
30 May 2004      : Workshop

Contact

Contact person: Oliver Streiter
Contact Email: ostreiter at eurac.edu
Workshop URL: http://dev.eurac.edu:8080/sign/index.html