SIGUL July 2025

sigul@list.elra.info

2 participants
5 discussions

Third Call for Papers, Participation and Demo - IWSLT 2025
by Atul K. Ojha 12 Dec '25

12 Dec '25

Apologies for cross-posting. ---------------------------------------- *The International Conference on Spoken Language Translation* *ACL – 22nd IWSLT 2025 – **Third** Call for Participation* *31 July-1 August 2025 - Vienna, Austria* http://iwslt.org The International Conference on Spoken Language Translation (IWSLT) <https://iwslt.org/> is the premier annual conference for all aspects of Spoken Language Translation. Every year, the conference organises and sponsors open evaluation campaigns around key challenges in simultaneous and consecutive translation, under real-time/low latency or offline conditions and under low-resource or multilingual constraints. System descriptions and results from participants’ systems and scientific papers related to key algorithmic advances and best practices are presented. IWSLT is the venue of the SIGSLTs <https://iwslt.org/sigslt/>, the Special Interest Group on Spoken Language Translation <https://iwslt.org/sigslt/> of ACL <https://www.aclweb.org/portal/>, ISCA <https://www.isca-speech.org/> and ELRA <https://www.elra.info/>. With a track record of 21 years, IWSLT benchmarks and proceedings serve as reference for all researchers and practitioners working on speech translation and related fields. The 22nd edition of IWSLT will be run as a hybrid ELRA <https://www.elra.info/>/ACL <https://www.aclweb.org/portal/> event, co-located with ACL 2025 <https://2025.aclweb.org/> from 31 July to 1 August 2025. *Important Dates* *January 1, 2025*: Release of shared task training and dev data *March 15, 2025*: Scientific paper submission deadline *Apr 1-15, 2025*: Evaluation period *April 21, 2025*: System description paper and demo submission deadline *May 15, 2025*: Notification of acceptance *June 1, 2025*: Camera-ready deadline (all paper) *July 31-Aug 1*, *2025*: IWSLT conference *Evaluation* The IWSLT 2025 features shared tasks <https://iwslt.org/2025/#shared-tasks> that address the following focus areas: - High-resource ST: Offline track, Simultaneous track, Subtitling track, Model compression track - Low-resource ST: Low-resource and Indic (multilingual) tracks - Instruction-following Speech Processing track: Technical domain ST, ASR, Summarization, and QA Training and development data for each shared task will be prepared and released by the respective organisers (for further information on this initiative, please refer to the IWSLT website <https://iwslt.org/2025/>). Participants will receive instructions about how to submit their runs. In addition, participants have the opportunity to present their work through a system paper that will be published in the ACL Proceedings. *Conference* IWSLT also invites submissions of scientific papers to be published in the ACL Proceedings and presented either in oral or poster format. The conference selects high-quality, original contributions on theoretical and practical issues of spoken language translation research, technologies and applications. Submissions will be accepted directly through the IWSLT submission site (to be announced on the website <https://iwslt.org/2025/>). We will also accept commitments of submissions with reviews from the ACL Rolling Review. Additionally, to foster cross-pollination of ideas, the conference also invites the presentation of papers on speech translation recently published elsewhere. Please note that this is for non-archival presentation of papers relevant to speech translation already published in other venues (e.g., Findings for the *ACL, speech, NLP or MT conferences). Submissions for this category will be accepted through a dedicated form (to be announced on the website <https://iwslt.org/2025/>). Papers will be checked for relevance to IWSLT, and assigned either oral or poster presentation slots if selected. *Demo Session* We invite researchers, practitioners, and industry professionals to participate in an engaging demo session highlighting innovative systems, tools, and component technologies that advance the field of speech translation. The session will include live and interactive system demonstrations to foster discussion and knowledge exchange among participants across the field. For more information, please see our Call for Demos <https://iwslt.org/2025/call-for-demos>. *Contact* Please email iwslt-evaluation-campaign(a)googlegroups.com if you have any questions related to the shared tasks. Thanks, Marine, Marcello, Alex, Jan, Sebastian, Elizabeth, Atul (IWSLT organisers)

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Deadline extension RAIL workshop and DHASA conference
by Menno Van Zaanen 28 Jul '25

28 Jul '25

Deadline extension: Due to several requests, we have decided to extend the deadlines for both the DHASA 2025 conference and the co-located RAIL workshop. NEW DEADLINE: 4 August 2025 DHASA Conference dates: 10-14 November 2025 RAIL Workshop date: 10 November 2025 Venue: CSIR International Convention Centre. The sixth RAIL workshop website: https://sadilar.org/rail-2025/ DHASA website: https://digitalhumanities.org.za/ DHASA conference information (RAIL information follows below): Theme: The role of humanities in digital humanities and artificial intelligence The Digital Humanities Association of Southern Africa (DHASA) is pleased to announce its fifth conference, focusing on the theme The role of humanities in digital humanities and artificial intelligence. In a region where the field of Digital Humanities is still relatively underdeveloped, this conference aims to address this gap and foster growth and collaboration in the field. The conference offers an opportunity for researchers interested in showcasing their work in the broad field of Digital Humanities to come together. By doing so, the conference provides a comprehensive overview of the current state-of- the-art in Digital Humanities, particularly within the Southern Africa region. As such, we welcome submissions related to Digital Humanities research conducted by individuals from Southern Africa or research focused on the geographical area of Southern Africa in the broad sense. Furthermore, the conference serves as a platform for information sharing and networking among researchers passionate about Digital Humanities. By bringing together experts working on Digital Humanities in Southern Africa or with a focus on Southern Africa, we aim to promote collaboration and facilitate further research in this dynamic field. In addition to the main conference, affiliated workshops and tutorials will be organised, providing researchers with valuable insights into novel technologies and tools. These supplementary events are designed for researchers interested in specific aspects of Digital Humanities or seeking practical information to enter or advance their knowledge in the field. The DHASA conference welcomes interdisciplinary contributions from researchers in various domains of Digital Humanities, including, but not limited to, language, literature, visual art, performance and theatre studies, media studies, music, history, sociology, psychology, language technologies, library studies, philosophy, methodologies, software and computation, AI, and more. Our goal is to cultivate an inclusive scientific community of practice within Digital Humanities. RAIL 2025 Workshop information: The sixth Resources for African Indigenous Languages (RAIL) workshop will be co-located with the Digital Humanities Association of Southern Africa (DHASA) 2025 conference at the CSIR International Convention Centre in Pretoria, South Africa, on 10 November 2025. The RAIL workshop is an interdisciplinary platform for researchers working on African indigenous languages resources such as natural languages processing (NLP) tools, Human Language Technologies (HLT), data collections, and annotations. This workshop aims to foster a scientific community of practice that focuses on computational linguistic tools and data that are designed for or applied to the indigenous languages of Africa. Many African languages are under- resourced while only a few are considered to be somewhat better resourced. These languages often share interesting properties such as writing systems, making them different from most high-resourced languages. From a computational perspective, these languages lack enough corpora to undertake high level development of NLP and HLT tools, which in turn impedes the development of African languages in these areas. During previous workshops, it was noted that the problems and solutions presented were not only applicable to African languages but were also relevant to many other low-resource languages across the world. Because these languages share similar challenges, this workshop provides researchers with opportunities to work collaboratively on issues of language resource development and learn from each other.The RAIL workshop has several aims. First, the workshop brings together researchers who work on African indigenous languages, forming a community of practice for people working on indigenous languages. Second, the workshop aims to reveal currently unknown or unpublished existing resources (corpora, NLP tools, and applications), resulting in a better overview of the current state-of-the-art, and also allows for discussions on novel, desired resources for future research in this area. Third, it enhances sharing of knowledge on the development of low-resource languages. Finally, it enables discussions on how to improve the quality as well as availability of the resources.The workshop has “Language resources in the age of large language models” as its theme, but submissions on any topic related to properties of African indigenous languages (including related non- African languages) may be accepted. Submission Guidelines for both RAIL and DHASA: * Long papers: Authors may submit long papers with a maximum of 8 content pages and unlimited pages for references and appendices. The final versions of accepted long papers will be granted an additional page (leading to a total of up to 9 content pages) to incorporate reviewers’ comments. Long papers accepted for the conference will be presented in 30-minute time slots (which includes 10 minutes for questions). * Short papers: Authors may submit short papers with a maximum of 5 content pages and unlimited pages for references and appendices. The final versions of accepted short papers will be allowed an extra page (leading to a total of up to 6 content pages) to accommodate reviewers’ comments. Short papers accepted for the conference will be presented in 15-minute time slots (which includes 5 minutes for questions). * Executive summaries: Authors can submit an executive summary for work in progress, limited to 1 page. Executive summaries accepted for the conference will be presented as posters during a dedicated poster presentation slot. Steps to submit your contributions: * Please register here: https://www.conftool.pro/dhasa2025 * Once registered, click on Your Submissions to submit a new contribution. * Here you will have the option to submit a: - DHASA Long paper - DHASA Short paper - DHASA Executive summary - RAIL submission * Select and click on your contribution type to continue. * Add the following detail: - Information on all the authors - Contribution details, including the title and topic best suited to your contribution. - Up to five keywords, and - An indication of whether students are submitting the contribution. * Upload your file and submit, or save your submission and return at a later stage to upload your file. Peer Review Process The peer review process is fully open. This means that the reviewers will see your name, and you will be able to see the reviewers’ names. This also means that you do not need to anonymise your submission. Data Sets Authors are encouraged to upload their dataset to the SADiLaR repository (https://repo.sadilar.org/). Guidelines for submission are available here: https://sadilar.org/en/resource-guidelines/. In case of difficulties uploading the datasets, please reach out to Benito Trollip (benito.trollip(a)nwu.ac.za). All accepted long and short paper submissions that are presented at the conference will be published in the JDHASA journal, see https://upjournals.up.ac.za/index.php/dhasa. In addition, the executive summaries for the poster presentations will be published in a book of executive summaries before the conference. We particularly encourage student submissions where the first author is a student. All submissions should adhere to the ACL style guide: https://acl-org.github.io/ACLPUB/formatting.html *Please note that although we follow the ACL guidelines, the page limit for DHASA submissions differs from what is specified in those guidelines. Submissions should be submitted in PDF format. Submissions that do not adhere to the prescribed style guide will be rejected. Follow this link to go to the submission platform: https://dh2025.digitalhumanities.org.za/submission/ DHASA Organising Committee Sthembiso Mkhwanazi, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Aby Louw, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Andiswa Bukula, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources Franco Mak, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Ilana Wilken, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Johannes Sibeko, Nelson Mandela University Juan Steyn, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources Laurette Marais, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Marissa Griesel, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources Menno van Zaanen, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources Privolin Naidoo, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research RAIL Organising Committee Rooweither Mabuya, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR), South Africa Muzi Matfunjwa, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR), South Africa Mmasibidi Setaka, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR), South Africa Menno van Zaanen, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR), South Africa -- Prof Menno van Zaanen menno.vanzaanen(a)nwu.ac.za Professor in Digital Humanities South African Centre for Digital Language Resources https://www.sadilar.org ________________________________ NWU PRIVACY STATEMENT: http://www.nwu.ac.za/it/gov-man/disclaimer.html DISCLAIMER: This e-mail message and attachments thereto are intended solely for the recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorised review, use, disclosure, or distribution is prohibited. If you have received the e-mail by mistake, please contact the sender or reply e-mail and delete the e-mail and its attachments (where appropriate) from your system. ________________________________

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LARP 2025: call for relevant OpenReview-reviewed submissions, deadline: July 31!
by LARP2025 22 Jul '25

22 Jul '25

LARP 2025: call for papers reviewed with any OpenReview-hosted venue relevant for LARP, e.g. ACL ARR, CoNLL, COLM, etc.! Got a paper on NLP, language models and representations, or neuro-symbolic/neuroexplicit approaches to language? Has it already been peer-reviewed on OpenReview? Paste your ARR link (or email us first for other OpenReview venues) as LARP 2025 is calling for OpenReview (OR) commitments! More information: https://gu-clasp.github.io/LARP/cfp.html When? September 8 and 9 (on-site and hybrid). Where? Gothenburg, Sweden. Registration is free of cost and optionally includes the conference dinner. Amazing keynote talks by Dan Roth, Vaishak Belle and Moa Johansson. We also welcome non-archival submissions for papers that have previously been published in other venues, works in progress, or anything in between. Some non-archival papers may be offered to do an oral presentation. Join us for a conference with focus on language with particular interest in neuro-symbolic or neuroexplicit approaches to language. To submit, please visit https://openreview.net/group?id=CLASP/LARP/2025/ARR_Commitment. The conference is backed by SigSem and ACL to publish and archive accepted papers! For questions, please email us at larp2025(a)flov.gu.se<mailto:larp2025@flov.gu.se> Invited speakers ---- Dan Roth, University of Pennsylvania and Oracle Vaishak Belle, University of Edinburgh Moa Johansson, Chalmers University of Technology Important dates ---- - Commitment deadline for OpenReview-reviewed submissions: July 31, 2025 - Submission deadline (non-archival): August 1, 2025 - Notification of acceptance (non-archival): August 8, 2025 - Camera ready (OR-reviewed): August 15, 2025 - Registration deadline: August 24, 2025 (on-site), September 7, 2025 (online) All deadlines are 11:59PM UTC-12:00 (“anywhere on Earth”). General information ---- Language models And RePresentations (LARP) brings together researchers that explore how information is structured, encoded and used in computational language systems. We encourage submissions from fields of computational linguistics, AI, and NLP with focus on neuro-symbolic or neurexplicit approaches to language. We also accept submissions for other related topics (see examples below). The conference is organised by the Centre for Linguistic Theory and Studies in Probability (CLASP, https://gu-clasp.github.io/), University of Gothenburg. The conference will be held between September 8 and 9 in Gothenburg, Sweden (on-site and hybrid). Topics of interest ---- We hope to see innovative work that considers neural and symbolic learning and processing in terms of different modelling perspectives. Papers are invited on the following topics as they relate to natural language: - Neuro-symbolic integration: novel hybrid frameworks combining symbolic representations with neural network learning for enhanced reasoning and natural language processing - Explainable machine learning: techniques that allow for better interpretability, transparency, and explainability of neural, symbolic and neuro-symbolic architectures - Logical constraints in neural networks: methods that use logical structures (e.g., knowledge bases, ontologies) for post-hoc or inherent explainability - Automated reasoning systems providing human-interpretable rationales for decisions - Symbolic planning and control in neural workflows - Application-driven scenarios (robots, autonomous systems) showcasing benefits of symbolic approaches - Techniques that integrate symbolic representations into text or multimodal generation - Approaches that enforce domain knowledge, consistency, or adherence to constraints in text and/or multimodal generation - Fine-tuning and in-context learning strategies that incorporate logical or rule-based knowledge This list is illustrative but is not intended to be exhaustive. Submission requirements and open submission tracks NEW!!! OpenReview Commitment Track We welcome papers that have already been fully reviewed in any OpenReview-hosted venue relevant to LARP such as ACL Rolling Review (ARR), SemDial, CoNLL, COLM, and similar conferences or workshops. If your paper was reviewed in ARR, simply paste the public OpenReview link (which includes the paper, reviews, and meta-review) into the submission form. If your paper was reviewed in another OpenReview-hosted venue, please email the Programme Chairs first so that we can confirm access to the reviews before you submit. Submission to this track can be non-archival on request. Both the submission and its reviews will be evaluated by the program committee for their relevance to the conference topic. To submit, please visit https://openreview.net/group?id=CLASP/LARP/2025/ARR_Commitment. Non-archival track At the time of submission, authors may indicate that their paper should be considered for the non-archival track. The format for non-archival submissions is the same for both long and short papers as it is for the archival submissions. Non-archival papers will not undergo the peer review process. They will be evaluated by the programme committee for clarity and content relevance before the decision by the PC is made. Non-archival papers do not need to be anonymous. If accepted, they are to be published on the conference website and presented as posters. We will not ask for camera-ready version for non-archival submissions as they can be submitted in their final form. Poster abstracts We invite researchers to submit abstracts in the above areas of interest. Abstract submissions are non-archival. This is a great opportunity to get feedback on work in progress or to present previously published work to a new audience. The deadline for abstract submission is the same as for non-archival papers. Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by August 8, 2025. Abstract submissions should be .pdf files and use the LaTeX or Word templates provided for ACL submissions (https://github.com/acl-org/acl-style-files). Abstracts should not exceed 2 pages (supplementary materials, appendices, a section on limitations and ethical concerns are not included) and be submitted via OpenReview system at https://openreview.net/group?id=CLASP/LARP/2025/Conference. The acceptance decision on abstracts will go through the same procedure as papers for the non-archival track. Accepted abstracts will be presented as posters. Closed submission tracks ---- Archival track Archival track will feature the following types of submissions to appear in conference proceedings: we accept long papers (max 8 pages) and short papers (max 4 pages). Long and short papers must describe substantial, original, and unpublished research. Supplementary materials, appendices, a section on limitations and ethical concerns do not count towards the page limit. Archival accepted papers will be published in the 2025 ACL Anthology as a CLASP Conference Proceedings. Papers should be electronically submitted via the OpenReview system at https://openreview.net/group?id=CLASP/LARP/2025/Conference. Submissions should be .pdf files and use the LaTeX or Word templates provided for ACL submissions (https://github.com/acl-org/acl-style-files). Archival submissions must be anonymous. Please make sure that you select the right track when submitting your paper. Contact the organisers if you have questions. Concurrent Submissions ---- Papers that have been or will be submitted to other conferences or publications must indicate this at submission time using a footnote on the title page of the submissions. We will not accept publications or presentation papers that overlap significantly in content or results with papers that will be (or have been) published elsewhere. Authors of papers accepted for presentation at LARP must notify the program chairs by the camera-ready deadline as to whether the paper will be presented. All accepted papers must be presented at the conference to appear in the Proceedings. Camera Ready Versions ---- Camera ready versions must be deanonymised. Archival submissions get 1 more page to address comments from reviewers: long papers can be maximum up to 9 pages, short papers can be maximum up to 5 pages. Organisers ---- LARP is organised by the Centre for Linguistic Theory and Studies in Probability (CLASP, https://gu-clasp.github.io/) at the Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science (FLoV), University of Gothenburg. CLASP focuses its research on the application of probabilistic and information theoretic methods to the analysis of natural language. CLASP is concerned both with understanding the cognitive foundations of language and developing efficient language technology. We work at the interface of computational linguistics/natural language processing, theoretical linguistics, and cognitive science. For practical inquiries, send an email to larp2025(a)flov.gu.se<mailto:larp2025@flov.gu.se>.

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Deadline extension: DHASA Conference 2025
by Menno Van Zaanen 12 Jul '25

12 Jul '25

Deadline extension: DHASA Conference 2025 https://dh2025.digitalhumanities.org.za Due to several requests, we have decided to extend the deadlne NEW DEADLINE: 28 July 2025 Theme: The role of humanities in digital humanities and artificial intelligence The Digital Humanities Association of Southern Africa (DHASA) is pleased to announce its fifth conference, focusing on the theme The role of humanities in digital humanities and artificial intelligence. In a region where the field of Digital Humanities is still relatively underdeveloped, this conference aims to address this gap and foster growth and collaboration in the field. The conference offers an opportunity for researchers interested in showcasing their work in the broad field of Digital Humanities to come together. By doing so, the conference provides a comprehensive overview of the current state-of- the-art in Digital Humanities, particularly within the Southern Africa region. As such, we welcome submissions related to Digital Humanities research conducted by individuals from Southern Africa or research focused on the geographical area of Southern Africa in the broad sense. Furthermore, the conference serves as a platform for information sharing and networking among researchers passionate about Digital Humanities. By bringing together experts working on Digital Humanities in Southern Africa or with a focus on Southern Africa, we aim to promote collaboration and facilitate further research in this dynamic field. In addition to the main conference, affiliated workshops and tutorials will be organised, providing researchers with valuable insights into novel technologies and tools. These supplementary events are designed for researchers interested in specific aspects of Digital Humanities or seeking practical information to enter or advance their knowledge in the field. The DHASA conference welcomes interdisciplinary contributions from researchers in various domains of Digital Humanities, including, but not limited to, language, literature, visual art, performance and theatre studies, media studies, music, history, sociology, psychology, language technologies, library studies, philosophy, methodologies, software and computation, AI, and more. Our goal is to cultivate an inclusive scientific community of practice within Digital Humanities. Suggested topics include the following: * The role of AI in digital humanities, the role of Digital Humanities in shaping AI, and the broader role of the humanities in both AI and DH projects; * Digital archives and the preservation of marginalised voices; * Intersectionality and the digital humanities: exploring the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, culture, and class in digital research and activism; * Activism and social change through digital media: how digital humanities tools and methodologies can be used to promote inclusion; * Engaging marginalised communities in the creation and use of digital tools, resources, and AI; * Exploring the role of digital humanities in decolonising knowledge and promoting indigenous perspectives; * The ethics of data collection and analysis in digital humanities and AI research; * The role of digital humanities and AI in promoting inclusive and equitable pedagogy; * Digital humanities and inclusion in the context of African and global perspectives and international collaborations; * Critical approaches to digital humanities and inclusion: examining the limitations and possibilities of digital tools and methodologies in promoting inclusion; and * Collaborative digital humanities projects with non-profit organisations, community groups, and cultural institutions; * Development of digital and AI tools for supporting digital humanities; * Novel utilisation of digital and AI tools for performing digital humanities research; * The role of digital humanities in the classroom: reimagining literacy and AI fluency; * Digital humanities data and project management; * The role of librarians in the digital humanities project; * Any other digital humanities-related topic that serves the Southern African community. Submission Guidelines The DHASA conference 2025 asks for three types of submissions: * Long papers: Authors may submit long papers with a maximum of 8 content pages and unlimited pages for references and appendices. The final versions of accepted long papers will be granted an additional page (leading to a total of up to 9 content pages) to incorporate reviewers' comments. Long papers accepted for the conference will be presented in 30-minute time slots (which includes 10 minutes for questions). * Short papers: Authors may submit short papers with a maximum of 5 content pages and unlimited pages for references and appendices. The final versions of accepted short papers will be allowed an extra page (leading to a total of up to 6 content pages) to accommodate reviewers' comments. Short papers accepted for the conference will be presented in 15-minute time slots (which includes 5 minutes for questions). * Executive summaries: Authors can submit an executive summary for work in progress, limited to 1 page. Executive summaries accepted for the conference will be presented as posters during a dedicated poster presentation slot. All accepted long and short paper submissions that are presented at the conference will be published in the JDHASA journal, see https://upjournals.up.ac.za/index.php/dhasa. In addition, the executive summaries for the poster presentations will be published in a book of executive summaries before the conference. We particularly encourage student submissions where the first author is a student. All submissions should adhere to the ACL style guide: https://acl-org.github.io/ACLPUB/formatting.html Submissions should be submitted in PDF format. Submissions that do not adhere to the prescribed style guide will be rejected. Follow this link to go to the submission platform: https://dh2025.digitalhumanities.org.za/submission/ Authors are encouraged to upload their datasets to the SADiLaR repository: https://repo.sadilar.org/. In case of difficulties uploading the datasets, please reach out to Benito Trollip (benito.trollip(a)nwu.ac.za). Important dates Submission deadline: 28 July 2025 Date of notification: 16 September 2025 Camera-ready copy deadline: 24 October 2025 Conference: 10 November 2025 - 14 November 2025 Conference venue: CSIR ICC, Pretoria, South Africa Co-located events Several co-located events are currently being prepared, including workshops and tutorials. These will be updated on the conference website. Organising Committee Aby Louw, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Andiswa Bukula, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources Avi Moodley, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Franco Mak, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Franziska Pannach, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen Ilana Wilken, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Johannes Sibeko, Nelson Mandela University Juan Steyn, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources Laurette Marais, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Marissa Griesel, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources Menno van Zaanen, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources Privolin Naidoo, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Sthembiso Mkhwanazi, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research -- Prof Menno van Zaanen menno.vanzaanen(a)nwu.ac.za Professor in Digital Humanities South African Centre for Digital Language Resources https://www.sadilar.org ________________________________ NWU PRIVACY STATEMENT: http://www.nwu.ac.za/it/gov-man/disclaimer.html DISCLAIMER: This e-mail message and attachments thereto are intended solely for the recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorised review, use, disclosure, or distribution is prohibited. If you have received the e-mail by mistake, please contact the sender or reply e-mail and delete the e-mail and its attachments (where appropriate) from your system. ________________________________

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Deadline extension: Sixth Workshop on Resources for African Indigenous Language (RAIL)
by Menno Van Zaanen 12 Jul '25

12 Jul '25

Deadline extension: Sixth Workshop on Resources for African Indigenous Language (RAIL) Co-located with DHASA 2025 https://sadilar.org/rail-2025/ Due to several requests, we have decided to extend the deadlne NEW DEADLINE: 28 July 2025 RAIL Workshop date: 10 November 2025 DHASA Conference dates: 10-14 November 2025 Venue: CSIR International Convention Centre. The sixth RAIL workshop website: https://sadilar.org/rail-2025/ DHASA website: https://digitalhumanities.org.za/ The sixth Resources for African Indigenous Languages (RAIL) workshop will be co-located with the Digital Humanities Association of Southern Africa (DHASA) 2025 conference at the CSIR International Convention Centre in Pretoria, South Africa, on 10 November 2025. The RAIL workshop is an interdisciplinary platform for researchers working on African indigenous languages resources such as natural languages processing (NLP) tools, Human Language Technologies (HLT), data collections, and annotations. This workshop aims to foster a scientific community of practice that focuses on computational linguistic tools and data that are designed for or applied to the indigenous languages of Africa. Many African languages are under-resourced while only a few are considered to be somewhat better resourced. These languages often share interesting properties such as writing systems, making them different from most high-resourced languages. From a computational perspective, these languages lack enough corpora to undertake high level development of NLP and HLT tools, which in turn impedes the development of African languages in these areas. During previous workshops, it was noted that the problems and solutions presented were not only applicable to African languages but were also relevant to many other low-resource languages across the world. Because these languages share similar challenges, this workshop provides researchers with opportunities to work collaboratively on issues of language resource development and learn from each other. The RAIL workshop has several aims. First, the workshop brings together researchers who work on African indigenous languages, forming a community of practice for people working on indigenous languages. Second, the workshop aims to reveal currently unknown or unpublished existing resources (corpora, NLP tools, and applications), resulting in a better overview of the current state-of-the-art, and also allows for discussions on novel, desired resources for future research in this area. Third, it enhances sharing of knowledge on the development of low-resource languages. Finally, it enables discussions on how to improve the quality as well as availability of the resources. The workshop has “Language resources in the age of large language models” as its theme, but submissions on any topic related to properties of African indigenous languages (including related non- African languages) may be accepted. Suggested topics include (but are not limited to) the following: * Digital representations of linguistic structures * Descriptions of corpora or other data sets of African indigenous languages * Building resources for (under-resourced) African indigenous languages * Developing and using African indigenous languages in the digital age * Effectiveness of digital technologies for the development of African indigenous languages * Revealing unknown or unpublished existing resources for African indigenous languages * Developing desired resources for African indigenous languages * Improving quality, availability and accessibility of African indigenous language resources Submission requirements: We invite papers on original, unpublished work related to the topics of the workshop. Submissions, presenting completed work, may consist of up to eight (8) pages of content plus additional pages of references. The final camera-ready version of accepted long papers are allowed one additional page of content (up to 9 pages) so that reviewers’ feedback can be incorporated. Papers should be formatted according to the DHASA style sheet which is provided on the Journal of the Digital Humanities Association of Southern Africa website (https://upjournals.up.ac.za/index.php/dhasa/about). Reviewing is double-blind, so make sure to anonymise your submission (e.g., do not provide author names, affiliations, project names, etc.) Limit the amount of self citations (anonymised citations should not be used). The RAIL workshop follows the DHASA submission requirements. Please submit papers in PDF format (the submission link is available on the website). Accepted papers will be published in proceedings linked to the DHASA conference. Important dates: Submission deadline: 28 July 2025 Date of notification: 16 September 2025 Camera ready copy deadline: 24 October 2025 Workshop: 10 November 2025 DHASA conference: 10 November 2025-14 November 2025 Organising Committee Rooweither Mabuya, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR), South Africa Muzi Matfunjwa, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR), South Africa Mmasibidi Setaka, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR), South Africa Menno van Zaanen, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR), South Africa -- Prof Menno van Zaanen menno.vanzaanen(a)nwu.ac.za Professor in Digital Humanities South African Centre for Digital Language Resources https://www.sadilar.org ________________________________ NWU PRIVACY STATEMENT: http://www.nwu.ac.za/it/gov-man/disclaimer.html DISCLAIMER: This e-mail message and attachments thereto are intended solely for the recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorised review, use, disclosure, or distribution is prohibited. If you have received the e-mail by mistake, please contact the sender or reply e-mail and delete the e-mail and its attachments (where appropriate) from your system. ________________________________

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SIGUL July 2025