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)
ALPS 2026: The sixth Advanced Language Processing School
Dates: Sunday 29th March to Friday 3rd April, 2026
Location: Aussois, French Alps
Website: https://lig-alps.imag.fr/
Application: https://lig-alps.imag.fr/index.php/application/
Previous year website (for reference, e.g. program): http://alps-2025.imag.fr/
About ALPS
ALPS is co-organized by LIG (Univ. Grenoble Alpes), Naver Labs Europe, and Cohere, and consists in a week-long series of lectures by world-class NLP researchers, sessions where participants present their work, social sessions, lab sessions, and outdoor activities in the mountains. The school will take place in the Alps (the Vanoise massif) at Aussois (1500m) and close to France’s first national park.
What ALPS represents:
Advanced lectures by first class researchers.
An atmosphere that fosters connections and interactions.
A poster session for attendees to present their work, gather feedback and brainstorm future work ideas..
Target audience
The intended audience of ALPS 2026 are graduate students (PhD students or advanced master students) in natural language processing or related fields. We also welcome other NLP practitioners working in industry or academia.
Application
See more details at https://lig-alps.imag.fr/index.php/application/
You will need a resumé (maximum length: 2 pages) and a cover letter. For the cover letter, it should be in English and explain your motivation in attending this advanced research school. We are unfortunately not capable of accepting all candidates, and this letter is a key component that helps us to ensure that the participant’s profiles are balanced and diverse.
Important dates:
Application deadline: 12th October 2025
Acceptance notification: 14th November 2025
Registration deadline: 15th January 2026
Winter School: 29th March to 3th April
Fees
The registration fees for the event encompass accommodation and full board at the conference venue, the Centre Paul Langevin.
Fees:
students: 700 euros
academic non student: 900 euros
industry & independents: 1300 euros
fee waiver recipients: 0 euro
If you have any questions, please contact us at the email specified at the following page: https://lig-alps.imag.fr/index.php/organizers/
Call for Participation and late breaking submissions
DHASA Conference and RAIL workshop 2025
https://dh2025.digitalhumanities.org.zahttps://sadilar.org/en/rail-2025/
Late breaking submissions deadline: 10 October 2025
DHASA conference dates: 11 November 2025-14 November 2025
RAIL workshop date: 10 November 2025
Conference venue: CSIR ICC, Pretoria, South Africa
Registration: https://dh2025.digitalhumanities.org.za/registration/
Late breaking submission Guidelines
* Late breaking submissions: Authors can submit a late breaking
submission, limited to 1 page. Late breaking submissions accepted for
the conference will be presented as a short presentation during a
dedicated late breaking submission presentation slot. The late breaking
submissions will be published in a book of abstracts 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 for late breaking submissions
Submission deadline: 10 October 2025
Date of notification: 17 October 2025
Camera-ready copy deadline: 24 October 2025
Conference: 10 November 2025 – 14 November 2025
Conference venue: CSIR ICC, Pretoria, South Africa
DHASA CONFERENCE
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 WORKSHOP
Theme: Language resources in the age of large language models
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.
Organising Committees
DHASA conference
Aby Louw, 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
RAIL workshop
Rooweither Mabuya, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources
Muzi Matfunjwa, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources
Mmasibidi Setaka, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources
Menno van Zaanen, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources
--
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
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𝗝𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗡𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗟𝗮𝗻𝗴𝘂𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 - 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗜𝘀𝘀𝘂𝗲 𝗼𝗻 𝗟𝗮𝗻𝗴𝘂𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗠𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗟𝗼𝘄-𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲 𝗟𝗮𝗻𝗴𝘂𝗮𝗴𝗲𝘀
URL - https://loreslm.github.io/specialissue
Neural language models have revolutionised natural language processing (NLP) and have provided state-of-the-art results for many tasks. However, their effectiveness is largely dependent on the pre-training resources. Therefore, language models (LMs) often struggle with low-resource languages in both training and evaluation. Recently, there has been a growing trend in developing and adopting LMs for low-resource languages. This special issue aims to provide a forum for researchers to share and discuss their ongoing work on LMs for low-resource languages.
𝗧𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗰𝘀
We invite submissions on a broad range of topics related to the development and evaluation of neural language models for low-resource languages, including but not limited to the following.
- Building language models for low-resource languages.
- Adapting/extending existing language models/large language models for low-resource languages.
- Corpora creation and curation technologies for training language models/large language models for low-resource languages.
- Benchmarks to evaluate language models/large language models in low-resource languages.
- Prompting/in-context learning strategies for low-resource languages with large language models.
- Review of available corpora to train/fine-tune language models/large language models for low-resource languages.
- Multilingual/cross-lingual language models/large language models for low-resource languages.
- Applications of language models/large language models for low-resource languages (i.e. machine translation, chatbots, content moderation, etc.)
𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀
Paper submission: December 31, 2025
First decision: March 31, 2026- April 30, 2026
Revised version submission: May 1, 2026- June 1, 2026
Final decision: August 30, 2026
𝗦𝘂𝗯𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻
Submissions should be formatted according to the journal guidelines available - https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/natural-language-processing/informa… and submitted through the manuscript submission system - https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/nlp. To ensure your manuscript is considered for this special issue, please select “Language Models for Low-Resource Languages” under Special Issue Designation when uploading your manuscript.
Guest Editors
Hansi Hettiarachchi, Lancaster University, UK
Tharindu Ranasinghe, Lancaster University, UK
Paul Rayson, Lancaster University, UK
Ruslan Mitkov, Lancaster University, UK
Mohamed Gaber, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Guest Editorial Board
Gábor Bella - IMT Atlantique, France
Ana-Maria Bucur - University of Bucharest, Romania
Çağrı Çöltekin - University of Tübingen, Germany
Vera Danilova - Uppsala University, Sweden
Ona de Gibert - University of Helsinki, Finland
Ignatius Ezeani - Lancaster University, UK
Amal Htait - Aston University, UK
Ali Hürriyetoğlu - Wageningen University & Research, Netherlands
Danka Jokic - University of Belgrade, Serbia
Diptesh Kanojia - University of Surrey, UK
Taro Watanabe - Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Japan
Muhidin Mohamed - Aston University, UK
Alistair Plum - University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Damith Premasiri - Lancaster University, UK
Guokan Shang - Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, France
Ravi Shekhar - University of Essex, UK
Best Regards
Tharindu Ranasinghe on behalf of the Guest Editors
First Call for Papers - International Conference ‘New Trends in Translation and Interpreting Technology’ (NeTTIT’2026)
The third edition of the International Conference ‘New Trends in Translation and Interpreting Technology’ (NeTTIT’2026) will take place in Dubrovnik, Croatia, from 24 to 27 June 2026.
The objective of the conference is (i) to bridge the gap between academia and industry in the field of translation and interpreting by bringing together academics in linguistics, translation and interpreting studies, machine translation and natural language processing, developers, practitioners, language service providers and vendors who work on or are interested in different aspects of technology for translation and interpreting, and (ii) to be a distinctive event for discussing the latest developments and practices. NeTTIT’2026 invites all professionals who would like to learn about the new trends, present the latest work and/or share their experience in the field, and who would like to establish business and research contacts, collaborations and new ventures.
The conference will include plenary presentations (research and user presentations, keynote speeches), poster sessions and panel discussions. All submitted papers will be peer-reviewed by experts, and the accepted papers will be published as open-access conference e-proceedings, which will be available at the time of the conference.
Conference Topics
Contributions are invited on any topic related to the latest technology and practices in translation, subtitling, localisation, interpreting, machine translation and Large Language Models used in translation and interpreting. NeTTIT’2026 will feature a Special Theme Track "Future of Translation and Interpreting Technologies in the Era of LLMs and Generative AI".
The conference topics include, but are not limited to (see also the special conference theme below):
>> CAT tools
- Translation Memory (TM) systems
- NLP and MT for translation memory systems
- Terminology extraction tools
- Localisation tools
>> Machine Translation
- Latest developments in Neural Machine Translation
- MT for under-resourced languages
- MT with low computing resources
- Multimodal MT
- Integration of MT in TM systems
- Resources for MT
>> Technologies for MT deployment
- MT evaluation techniques, metrics and evaluation results
- Human evaluations of MT output
- Evaluating MT in a real-world setting
- Quality estimation for MT
- Domain adaptation
>> Translation Studies
- Corpus-based studies applied to translation
- Corpora and resources for translation
- Translationese
- Cognitive effort and eye-tracking experiments in translation
>> Interpreting studies
- Corpus-based studies applied to interpreting
- Corpora and resources for interpreting
- Interpretese
- Resources for interpreting and interpreting technology applications
- Cognitive effort and eye-tracking experiments in interpreting
>> Interpreting technology
- Machine interpreting
- Computer-aided interpreting
- NLP for dialogue interpreting
- Development of NLP-based applications for communication in public service settings (healthcare, education, law, emergency services)
>> Emerging Areas in Translation and Interpreting
- MT and translation tools for literary texts and creative texts
- MT for social media and real-time conversations
- Sign language recognition and translation
>> Subtitling
- NLP and MT for subtitling
- Latest technology for subtitling
>> User needs
- Analysis of translators’ and interpreters’ needs in terms of translation and interpreting technology
- User requirements for interpreting and translation tools
- Incorporating human knowledge into translation and interpreting technology
- What existing translators’ (including subtitlers’) and interpreters’ tools do not offer
- User requirements for electronic resources for translators and interpreters
- Translation and interpreting workflows in larger organisations and the tools for translation and interpreting employed
>> The business of translation and interpreting
- Translation workflow and management
- Technology adoption by translators and industry
- Setting up translation / interpreting / language provider company
>> Teaching translation and interpreting
- Teaching Machine Translation
- Teaching translation technology
- Teaching interpreting technology
- Latest AI developments in the syllabi of translation and interpreting curricula
>> Ethical issues in translation and technology
- Bias and fairness in MT
- Privacy and security in cloud MT systems
- Transparency and explainability of MT systems
- Environmental impact on MT systems
>> Special Theme Track - Future of Translation and Interpreting Technologies in the Era of LLMs and Generative AI
We are excited to share that NeTTIT’2026 will have a special theme with the goal of stimulating discussion around Large Language Models, Generative AI and the Future of Translation and Interpreting Technologies. While the new generation of Large Language Models such as CHATGPT, Gemini, Claude, DeepSeek and LLAMA showcase remarkable advancements in language generation and understanding, we find ourselves in uncharted territory when it comes to their performance on various Translation and Interpreting Technology tasks with regards to fairness, interpretability, ethics and transparency.
The theme track invites studies on how LLMs perform on Translation and Interpreting Technology tasks and applications, and what this means for the future of the field. The possible topics of discussion include (but are not limited to) the following:
- Changes in (and the impact on) the translators and interpreters’ professions in the new AI era, especially as a result of the latest developments in LLMs and Generative AI
- Generative AI and translation
- Generative AI and interpreting
- Augmenting machine translation systems with generative AI
- Domain and terminology adaptation with Large Language Models
- Literary translation with Large Language Models
- Translation for low-resourced and minority languages with LLMs
- Improving Machine Translation Quality with Contextual Prompts in Large Language Models
- Prompt engineering for translation
- Generative AI for professional translation
- Generative AI for professional interpreting
Submissions and Publication
NeTTIT’2026 invites the following types of submissions in English:
>> Academic papers
* Regular long papers: These can be up to eight (8) pages long, presenting substantial, original, completed, and unpublished work.
* Short papers: These can be up to four (4) pages long and are suitable for describing small, focused contributions, work-in-progress, negative results, system demonstrations, etc.
>> User papers – for industry and practitioners. References to related work are optional. Allowed paper length: between 2 and 4 pages.
The conference will not consider and evaluate abstracts only.
Further details on the submission procedure will be made available in the Second Call for Papers due in October 2025.
The accepted papers will be published in the conference e-proceedings with assigned ISBN and DOI and made available online on the conference website at the time of the conference.
Important Dates
* Submissions due: 23 March 2026
* Reviewing process: 25 March – 25 April 2026
* Notification of acceptance: 28 April 2026
* Camera-ready due: 25 May 2026
* Conference camera-ready proceedings ready 15 June 2026
* Conference: 24-27 June 2026
Conference Chairs
Gloria Corpas Pastor (University of Malaga)
Ruslan Mitkov (Lancaster University and University of Alicante)
Marko Tadic (University of Zagreb)
Programme Committee Chairs
Constantin Orasan (University of Surrey)
Tharindu Ranasinghe (Lancaster University)
Publicity and Sponsorship Chair
Vilelmini Sosoni (Ionian University)
Venue
The conference will take place at the Centre for Advanced Academic Studies (CAAS) of the University of Zagreb (http://www.caas.unizg.hr/) in Dubrovnik.
Further information and contact details
The conference website (https://nettt-conference.com/) will be updated on a regular basis. For further information, please email nettit2026(a)nettt-conference.com<mailto:nettit2026@nettt-conference.com>. You can also follow us on social media for updates and announcements.
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/nettit2026/
Twitter/X - https://x.com/NeTTIT2026
Best Regards
Tharindu Ranasinghe
Call for Participation DHASA Conference and RAIL workshop 2025
https://dh2025.digitalhumanities.org.zahttps://sadilar.org/en/rail-2025/
DHASA conference dates: 11 November 2025-14 November 2025
RAIL workshop date: 10 November 2025
Conference venue: CSIR ICC, Pretoria, South Africa
Registration: https://dh2025.digitalhumanities.org.za/registration/
DHASA CONFERENCE
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 WORKSHOP
Them: Language resources in the age of large language models
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.
Organising Committees
DHASA conference
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
RAIL workshop
Rooweither Mabuya, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources
Muzi Matfunjwa, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources
Mmasibidi Setaka, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources
Menno van Zaanen, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources
--
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
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