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[1st Call for Papers] ELRA/ISCA Special Interest Group on Under-Resourced Languages - SIGUL 2022 Workshop
by Maite Melero 07 Mar '22

07 Mar '22

****Apologies for cross-postings**** ***Please help disseminate**** 1st Call for Papers SIGUL 2022 Workshop <https://sigul-2022.ilc.cnr.it/> a post-Conference Workshop of LREC 2022 Marseille (FR), 24-25 June 2022 The 1st Annual Meeting of the ELRA/ISCA Special Interest Group on Under-Resourced Languages (SIGUL 2022) will provide a forum for the presentation and discussion of cutting-edge research in text and speech processing for under-resourced languages by academic and industry researchers. SIGUL 2022 will carry on the tradition of the CCURL-SLTU (Collaboration and Computing for Under-Resourced Languages – Spoken Language Technologies for Under-resourced languages) Workshop Series, which has been organised since 2008 and, as LREC Workshops, since 2014. As usual, this Workshop spans the research interest areas of less-resourced, under-resourced, endangered, minority and minoritized languages. Since this year LREC includes a track dedicated specifically to endangered and less-resourced languages, the workshop aims to be a venue for networking and discussion as much as for scientific debate. Over the last years, research in NLP for less-resourced languages has taken momentum. The multiplication of research interest makes it even more necessary for the community that revolves around less-resourced languages to find opportunities for aggregation and discussion. Following the long-standing series of previous meetings, the SIGUL venue will provide a forum for the presentation of cutting edge research in NLP, MT and Speech Technologies for under-resourced languages to both academic and industry researchers, and also to offer a venue where researchers in different disciplines and from varied backgrounds can fruitfully explore new areas of intellectual and practical development while honouring their common interest of sustaining less-resourced languages. Topics include but are not limited to: - General research on under-resourced languages. - Transfer-learning techniques for under-resourced languages (use of multilingual, pretrained models, unsupervised, semi-supervised, zero-shot, few-shot training,...) in NLP, MT and Speech technologies. - We also invite position papers on methodological, ethical, or institutional issues Instructions for submission can be found here <https://sigul-2022.ilc.cnr.it/submission/> Important Dates - Paper submission deadline: 11 April 2022 - Notification of acceptance: 3 May 2022 - Camera-ready paper: 23 May 2022 - Workshop date: 24-25 June 2022 Organizing Committee - Maite Melero - Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, Spain - Sakriani Sakti - NAIST, Japan - Claudia Soria - CNR-ILC, Italy To contact the organisers, please mail sigul2022(a)ilc.cnr.it (Subject: [SIGUL2022]).

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Presentation of the Linguapax Review on Language Technologies and Language Diversity on March 9th 6pm CET
by Claudia Soria 01 Mar '22

01 Mar '22

To kick off the International Decade of Indigenous Languages 2022-32, Linguapax will present the 2021 Linguapax Review special issue on Language Technologies and Language Diversity The event will take place online on 9 March 2022, at 6 pm CET, via Zoom. During the presentation, authors of the 2021 Linguapax Review will participate in a live debate. We are proud to be joined by: Andras Kornai <https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAAAB31oBkjnx7uquXtV7tM7-w2lGSsKxbdw>, advisor at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and author of "Digital Language Death" Daniel Pimienta <https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAABDoo8BjE6560HaeAmfgcrAOHIqHATliMg>, mathematician, head of the Observatory of Linguistic and Cultural Diversity on the Internet Tunde Adegbola <https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAABR2W0B-E35vkfUZzAJdeTL_awNeQq0oDM>, scientist, musician, engineer, linguist and culture activist, founder of African Languages Technology Initiative (Alt-i) Roland Kuhn, <https://nrc.canada.ca/en/corporate/contact-us/nrc-directory-science-profess…>PRO at National Research Council Canada and leader of the Indigenous Languages Technology project Eddie Avila <https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAABGd_8BCQSXFxlgDkk4uf8jWhru9V_AbUA>, director of Rising Voices, an initiative to support peer networks of indigenous language digital activists in Latin America Subhashish P. <https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAANsOmkB2pSPSzrrS0zGo0pKhFCGXY8I80s> Panigrahi, National Geographic Explorer and documentary filmmaker, founder of OpenSpeaks, a project for documenting indigenous and endangered languages The debate will be moderated by Maite Melero <https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAAK3E2UBEPSieDYF2HzmjZpjuAL1A-7E5tQ>, coordinator of the special issue, and will address questions such as : Why should we - all of us - care about linguistic diversity? Are new technologies a threat or an opportunity for endangered languages? What are the keys for effective language digital activism? We will open this interesting debate to the audience. Participation is free but registration is required: at: https://lnkd.in/eZMf-QcV <https://lnkd.in/eZMf-QcV>

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Fwd: Update for Event : Special Session on Low-Resource ASR Development
by Joseph Mariani 08 Feb '22

08 Feb '22

fyi, Joseph -------- Message transféré -------- Sujet : Update for Event : Special Session on Low-Resource ASR Development Date : Tue, 8 Feb 2022 10:21:32 +0000 De : ACL Member Portal <portal(a)aclweb.org> Pour : joseph.mariani(a)limsi.fr Greetings Mariani J Joseph, Call for Papers: Special Session on Low-Resource ASR Development at INTERSPEECH 2022 We invite submission of original results or studies on automatic speech recognition (ASR) technologies for low-resource languages to the preliminarily accepted Low-Resource ASR Special Session at INTERSPEECH 2022. The special session aims to bring together researchers from all sectors working on ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) for low-resource languages and dialects to discuss the state of the art and future directions. It will allow for fruitful exchanges between participants in low-resource ASR challenges and evaluations and other researchers working on low-resource ASR development. One such challenge is the OpenASR Challenge series conducted by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) in coordination with IARPA’s (Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity) MATERIAL (Machine Translation for English Retrieval of Information in Any Language) program. The most recent challenge, OpenASR21, offered an ASR test of 15 low resource languages for conversational telephone speech, with additional data genres and case-sensitive scoring for some of the languages. Another challenge is the Hindi ASR Challenge that was recently opened to evaluate regional variations of Hindi with the use of spontaneous telephone speech recordings made available by Gram Vaani, a social technology enterprise company. The regional variations of Hindi, together with spontaneity of speech, natural background, and transcriptions with varying degrees of accuracy due to crowd sourcing make it a unique corpus for automatic recognition of spontaneous telephone speech in low-resource regional variations of Hindi. A 1000 hours audio-only data (no transcription) is also released with this challenge to explore self-supervised training for such a low-resource framework. We invite contributions from the OpenASR21 Challenge participants, the MATERIAL performers, the Hindi ASR Challenge participants, and any other researchers with relevant work in the low-resource ASR problem space. Topics: Reports of results from tests of low-resource ASR, such as (but not limited to) the NIST/IARPA OpenASR21 Challenge, IARPA MATERIAL evaluations, and the Hindi ASR Challenge. Topics focused on aspects of challenges and solutions in low-resource settings, such as: Zero- or few-shot learning methods Transfer learning techniques Cross-lingual training techniques Use of pretrained models Factors influencing ASR performance (such as dialect, gender, genre, variations in training data amount, or casing) Any other topics focused on low-resource ASR challenges and solutions URL: https://www.nist.gov/itl/iad/mig/low-resource-asr-development-special-se... [1] Organizers: Peter Bell, University of Edinburgh Jayadev Billa, University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute Prasanta Ghosh, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore William Hartmann, Raytheon BBN Technologies Kay Peterson, National Institute of Standards and Technology Aaditeshwar Seth, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi Important dates: Initial paper submission deadline: March 21, 2022 Please see the Important Dates section of the INTERSPEECH 2022 Call for Papers for the most up-to-date paper submission, acceptance, and other relevant dates. Read more: https://www.aclweb.org/portal/content/special-session-low-resource-asr-deve… [1] https://www.nist.gov/itl/iad/mig/low-resource-asr-development-special-sessi… --- This is an automatic message from the ACL Member Portal. If you want to change your alert profile, please visit https://www.aclweb.org/portal/alerts/status and login to your account using your username (Mariani J Joseph). To unsubscribe from all ACL alerts and other announcements, visit https://www.aclweb.org/portal/unsubscribe/6539/502a7792e3fd0 -- Depuis le 1er janvier 2021, le LIMSI a fusionné avec le LRI et est devenu le LISN (Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire des Sciences du Numérique) Since January 1st 2021, LIMSI merged with the LRI lab and became the LISN (Interdisciplinary Computer Science Laboratory) - Joseph MARIANI Directeur de Recherche Émérite au CNRS LISN Rue John von Neumann Université Paris-Saclay Batiment 508 91405 ORSAY Cedex (France) Tel: +33 1 69 15 78 56 Email:Joseph.Mariani@limsi.fr Web:https://perso.limsi.fr/mariani/index Web IMMI:http://immi.cnrs.fr/

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[French Presidency of the Council of the European Union 2022] Invitation: Online Forum on Innovation, Technologies and Plurilingualism (Feb 7-9, 2022)
by ELRA ELDA Information 21 Jan '22

21 Jan '22

[Apologies if you have already received this message] Among the highlights labeled «French Presidency of the Council of the European Union 2022», the Ministry of Culture, through the General Delegation to the French language and languages of France, is organizing the online Forum on *Innovation, technologies and plurilingualism*, on February 7-9, 2022, and would like to invite you to attend this 3-day event. Today, digital transformation offers new possibilities for plurilingualism, a challenge for social cohesion and citizenship in Europe. Opened by Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin, the French Minister of Culture, this forum will bring together many actors, French and European, in the domains of Translation, Language Technologies, Digital Technology and Artificial Intelligence, for the benefit of multilingualism in our societies. *Innovation, promotion, technologies and multilingualism* Four themes will structure the programme (https://www.culture.gouv.fr/Media/Medias-creation-rapide/PROGRAMME-EN_Forum…): * Multilingualism and translation in a Europe of culture and knowledge facing the digital challenge; * Language learning and teaching in Europe, their promotion and attractiveness through digital innovation; * Natural Language Processing, “discoverability” of scientific content, collection, evaluation and sharing of digital linguistic resources, with stakeholders from the worlds of science, research and business; * Language technologies, at the service of the European citizen, to promote EU values and a common sense of belonging. The Forum is organized in partnership with the Hauts-de-France Region and the ARTE TV channel. To attend this event and receive the related links, you are invited to register on the platform of the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union as follows: *Meeting: Forum « Innovation, Technologies and Plurilingualism » * 1- Click on the link: https://delegues.accreditation-eu2022.fr/secured/login 2- Click on : /Create a new account / 3- Fill in the form 4- You receive a message, click on the link to /Activate your account / 5- On the /Authentication/ page, fill in FORINOVPLURI.PARTICIDGLFLF (Delegation field) / ParticipaDGLFLF2022! (access code) / your email / your password (created at the first connection) Contact: soraya.loukakou(a)culture.gouv.fr <mailto:soraya.loukakou@culture.gouv.fr>

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SIGUL2022 Workshop accepted at LREC2022
by Claudia Soria 17 Dec '21

17 Dec '21

Dear All, we are happy to announce that SIGUL will have its own workshop during LREC2022: the workshop will take place on June 24 and 25. The call for papers and the list of the other accepted workshops is available here: https://lrec2022.lrec-conf.org/en/workshops-and-tutorials/ws-tut-schedule/. Please distribute! Best wishes for the upcoming Festive Season, Claudia -- Claudia Soria Researcher Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale "A. Zampolli" Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Via Moruzzi 1 56124 Pisa Italy Management Committee member COST Action CA19102 ‘Language In The Human-Machine Era' (LITHME) www.lithme.eu Tel. +39 050 3153166 Skype clausor

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UNESCO World Atlas of Languages, call to contribute to online survey on our languages.
by Claudia Soria 06 Oct '21

06 Oct '21

Dear friends and colleagues, I just received this call (below) from UNESCO World Atlas of Languages to contribute to their online survey on languages. Details are below in English, French and Spanish. Note that the deadline is October 10th. Best wishes, Claudia **** Dear Sir/Madam, We are pleased to inform you that on 17 September 2021, UNESCO launched a supplementary *online survey* destined to civil society to collect new data on the world’s languages. All specialized organizations, grass-root associations, and centers active in the domain of languages, and representatives of language communities from all over the world are invited to share data on their languages by *10 October 2021*. This data collection effort is aimed at feeding the new platform of the *UNESCO World Atlas of Languages*, an innovative and interactive tool that aims to document, value and support the world’s linguistic diversity. This Atlas will cover as many as possible of the more than 8,000 languages in use today. UNESCO has been working with national governments, partners, and experts to collect data on the world’s languages, and now calls on all communities across the planet to assist in this process and to ensure that all languages are represented. The World Atlas of Languages online survey is available in *English, French, Russian and Spanish* at the following link: https://forms.office.com/r/ZxUYaYsCZ9 The survey covers a variety of aspects related to language use and users in different domains of life. You are invited to submit inputs only with reference to the fields that are relevant for your work and interest. Your valuable contribution will help us to learn more about your languages and the challenges affecting their vitality, as well as to develop new solutions for the preservation, revitalization, and promotion of linguistic diversity around the world. For further information please visit: https://en.unesco.org/news/tell-us-about-your-language-play-part-building-u… Thank you very much for your interest and cooperation. *FRENCH* *Sujet :* /Parlez-nous de votre langue : participez à la construction de l'Atlas mondial des langues de l'UNESCO/ Madame, Monsieur Nous avons le plaisir de vous informer que le 17 septembre 2021, l'UNESCO a lancé une *enquête en ligne supplémentaire* destinée à la société civile afin de recueillir de nouvelles données sur les langues du monde. Toutes les organisations spécialisées, les associations de base et les centres actifs dans le domaine des langues, ainsi que les représentants des communautés linguistiques du monde entier, sont invités à partager des données sur leurs langues avant le *10 octobre 2021*. Cet effort de collecte de données vise à alimenter la nouvelle plateforme de *l'Atlas mondial des langues de l'UNESCO*, un outil innovant et interactif qui vise à documenter, valoriser et soutenir la diversité linguistique mondiale. Cet Atlas couvrira le plus grand nombre possible des plus de 8 000 langues utilisées aujourd'hui. L'UNESCO a travaillé avec les gouvernements nationaux, des partenaires et des experts pour collecter des données sur les langues du monde, et appelle maintenant toutes les communautés de la planète à participer à ce processus et à s'assurer que toutes les langues sont représentées de manière égale. L'enquête en ligne de l'Atlas mondial des langues est disponible en *anglais, français, russe et espagnol* au lien suivant : https://forms.office.com/r/ZxUYaYsCZ9 . L'enquête couvre une variété d'aspects liés à l'utilisation et aux utilisateurs des langues dans différents domaines de la vie. Vous êtes invités à soumettre des contributions uniquement en référence aux domaines qui sont pertinents pour votre travail et vos intérêts. Votre précieuse contribution nous aidera à mieux connaître vos langues et les défis qui affectent leur vitalité, ainsi qu'à élaborer de nouvelles solutions pour la préservation, la revitalisation et la promotion de la diversité linguistique dans le monde. Pour de plus amples informations, veuillez consulter : https://en.unesco.org/news/tell-us-about-your-language-play-part-building-u… Merci beaucoup de votre intérêt et votre coopération. *SPANISH * *Tema:* /Háblenos de su lengua: participe en la elaboración del Atlas Mundial de las Lenguas de la UNESCO/ Estimado señor/señora, Nos complace informarle de que el 17 de septiembre de 2021, la UNESCO lanzó una *encuesta complementaria en línea* destinada a la sociedad civil para recoger nuevos datos sobre las lenguas del mundo. Se invita a todas las organizaciones especializadas, a las asociaciones de base y a los centros activos en el ámbito de las lenguas, así como a los representantes de las comunidades lingüísticas de todo el mundo, a compartir los datos sobre sus lenguas antes del *10 de octubre de 2021*. Este esfuerzo de recopilación de datos tiene como objetivo alimentar la nueva plataforma del *Atlas Mundial de las Lenguas de la UNESCO*, una herramienta innovadora e interactiva que pretende documentar, valorar y apoyar la diversidad lingüística del mundo. Este Atlas abarcará el mayor número posible de las más de 8.000 lenguas en uso actualmente. La UNESCO ha estado trabajando con gobiernos nacionales, socios y expertos para recopilar datos sobre las lenguas del mundo, y ahora hace un llamamiento a todas las comunidades del planeta para que colaboren en este proceso y se aseguren de que todas las lenguas estén representadas por igual. La encuesta en línea del Atlas Mundial de las Lenguas está disponible en *inglés, francés, ruso y español* en el siguiente enlace: https://forms.office.com/r/ZxUYaYsCZ9 La encuesta abarca diversos aspectos relacionados con el uso y los usuarios de las lenguas en diferentes ámbitos de la vida. Le invitamos a que envíe sus aportaciones únicamente con referencia a los campos que son relevantes para su trabajo e interés. Su valiosa contribución nos ayudará a conocer mejor sus lenguas y los retos que afectan a su vitalidad, así como a desarrollar nuevas soluciones para la preservación, revitalización y promoción de la diversidad lingüística en todo el mundo. Para más información, visite: https://en.unesco.org/news/tell-us-about-your-language-play-part-building-u… Muchas gracias por su interés y cooperación. -- Claudia Soria Researcher Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale "A. Zampolli" Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Via Moruzzi 1 56124 Pisa Italy Management Committee member COST Action CA19102 ‘Language In The Human-Machine Era' (LITHME) www.lithme.eu Tel. +39 050 3153166 Skype clausor

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ALPS 2022 (Online) Winter School: 1st CFP
by Laurent Besacier 16 Sep '21

16 Sep '21

FIRST CALL FOR PARTICIPATION Advanced Language Processing School (ALPS) 2022 Jan, 17-22 2022 Grenoble - France ALPS2022 will take place entirely ONLINE University Grenoble Alpes and Naver Labs Europe are announcing the second Advanced Language Processing School (ALPS) 2022. Important Dates Application Deadline - Sept, 15th 2021 Notification - Oct 1st 2021 Registration Deadline - Oct, 31st 2021 Winter School - Jan, 17-22 2022 Target Audience This is a winter school covering advanced topics in NLP, and we are primarily targeting doctoral students and advanced (research) masters. A few slots will also be reserved to academics and persons working in research-heavy positions in industry. Characteristics This winter school aims to provide talks of renowned NLP researchers, as well as creating an ideal environment to work together. Confirmed speakers so far: - Kyunghyun Cho (NYU, USA) - Yejin Choi (University of Washington and Allen Institute for AI, USA) - Graham Neubig (Carnegie Mellon University, USA) - Colin Raffel (UNC Chapel Hill, USA and Hugging Face, France) In addition to the talks, we plan to have several labs (tba) with teacher assistants helping out. Poster sessions will be also organized for participants to present their work and interact with each other. Last year schedule is available on this link <http://alps-2021.imag.fr/index.php/schedule/index.html>. Website and online application: http://alps.imag.fr/ <http://alps.imag.fr/> Questions: alps2021(a)univ-grenoble-alpes.fr <mailto:alps2021@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr>

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Linguapax International Award call for nominations has been extended until end of July
by Maite Melero 05 Jul '21

05 Jul '21

The Linguapax Award is a recognition of actions carried out in different fields in favour of the preservation of linguistic diversity, revitalization and reactivation of linguistic communities and the promotion of multilingualism. Its purpose is to identify, value and disseminate successful actions and good practices around the world that serve as a reference and example to all persons, entities and groups who wish to act for languages. Please check https://www.linguapax.org/en/linguapax-opens-2021-linguapax-award/ for details. Maite ========================================= Maite Melero *Senior Researcher* *Barcelona Supercomputing Center* *Plan de las Tecnologías del Lenguaje (SEDIA)* https://www.linkedin.com/in/maite-melero-48530913/

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Summer/winter school | "First truly global /L+/ international summer/winter school on language acquisition" | 16-20 August 2021 | online
by Alex CRISTIA 22 Jun '21

22 Jun '21

Dear colleagues, I'm writing to ask for your help to advertise the free online school on language acquisition described below. We've had very few registrations from Africa and Oceania, and with the organizers, we think it would be really important to reach out particularly to colleagues working on under-resourced languages. Thank you in advance, Alex ---------- Forwarded message --------- Dear all, We are thrilled to announce the first edition of the truly global /L+/ international summer/winter school on language acquisition. WHEN: 16-20 August 2021 (Online) at three different time zones: 1. UTC+8 (Singapore time), 2. UTC (GMT), 3. UTC-4 (Amazon time). WEBSITE: https://www.dpss.unipd.it/summer-school-2021/home REGISTRATION: https://lilia.dpss.psy.unipd.it/summer-school-2021/ AIM: The First truly global /L+/ international summer/winter school on language acquisition aims to promote knowledge about language acquisition and establish a global network of collaboration with mutually beneficial exchanges for researchers and students. Students will acquire knowledge regarding current theories and controversies in first language acquisition, and will learn basic experimental methods to implement in their research studies. MOTIVATION: Although the ability to use language is universal in human cultures, there is a long-standing debate as to whether language develops in similar ways or whether it varies across populations and, if so, why. This debate would benefit from more studies including a variety of languages. However, less than 5% of published studies deal with acquisition in non-European languages. This gap is exacerbated by the fact that many talented students, teachers and researchers in underrepresented areas do not have access to specialist literature, research equipment, or international collaborative networks. The online L+/International summer/winter school on language acquisition aims at contributing to reducing this gap. TUITION: Participation in the School is free of charge. WHO CAN PARTICIPATE: Students at all levels (BA – PhD.) and early career researchers from all regions, but particularly Sub-Saharan Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and South and Central America, are encouraged to participate. There are no prerequisites in terms of specific knowledge or skills. TOPICS: The lecture topics are organized into four different streams: 1. Phonological development 2. Lexical development 3. Morphosyntax development 4. Effects of the environment on development Each stream will consist of five lectures that will be taught by instructors with extensive expertise in theory and methods in these different subfields of language acquisition. STRUCTURE: The activities will develop in a purely online format that will combine synchronous (live) and asynchronous (pre-recorded) events in order to encourage the participation of students and researchers in their time zone. The schedule is structured for attending two streams. When registering, participants will be asked to choose two streams. In each stream, we will also mark one lecture and discussion as our recommendation (taster) for participants who would like to get a taste of the streams that they did not choose. However, everyone is welcome to attend more than two streams. For this case, during the registration, they should indicate if there are other streams they are also interested in. APPLY: You can apply for participation with a brief motivation statement (100 words) following this link https://lilia.dpss.psy.unipd.it/summer-school-2021/ CONTACT: language1.summerschool.dpss(a)unipd.it We are looking forward to receiving your registrations! Best wishes, The Organization Team ------ - Bolanle Elizabeth Arokoyo (University of Ilorin) - Silvia Benavides-Varela (University of Padua) - Natalie Boll-Avetisyan (University of Potsdam) - Paulina Aravena Bravo (Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, University of Chile) - Alex Carstensen (Stanford University) - Alejandrina Cristia (Ecole Normale Supérieure) - Margaret Cychosz (University of Maryland, College Park) - Rodrigo Dal Ben (Concordia University) - Yatma Diop (Michigan State University) - Ilse van den Dobbelsteen (Max Planck Institute-Nijmegen) - Rowena Garcia (Max Plank Institute-Nijmegen) - Mulat Asnake Goshu (Addis Ababa University) - Naomi Havron (University of Haifa) - Leticia Schiavon Kolberg (State University of Campinas) - Hiromasa Kotera (University of Potsdam) - Ronel Laranjo (University of Philippines Diliman) - Catherine Mbagaya (Maseno University) - Bhuvana Narasimhan (University of Colorado) - Ramona Kunene Nicolas (Wits University) - Paul Okyere Omane (University of Potsdam) - Jayson Petras (University Philippines Diliman) - Caroline Rowland (Max Planck Institute-Nijmegen) - Andrew Ssemata (Makerere University) - Suzy Styles (Nanyang Technological University) - Catherine Urban (Ecole Normale Supérieure) - Fei Ting Woon (Nanyang Technological University)

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'The Dawn of the Human-Machine Era': Forecast report on new and emerging language technologies
by Claudia Soria 20 May '21

20 May '21

The 'human-machine era' is coming soon: a time when technology is integrated with our senses, not confined to mobile devices. The hardware will move from our hands into our eyes and ears. Intelligent eyewear and earwear will be able to translate another person's words, and make it look and sound like they were talking to you in your language. Technology will mediate what we see, hear and say, in real time. In addition, we will be having increasingly complex conversations with smart devices. This is not science fiction or marketing hype. These devices are currently in prototype, set for widespread consumer adoption in the coming years. All this will disrupt and transform our use and understanding of language use. Are we ready? A new EU 'COST Action' (https://cost.eu <https://cost.eu/>) research network 'Language in the Human-Machine Era' (LITHME), with members from 52 countries, explores how such technological advances are likely to change our everyday communication, and ultimately language itself. As a first major collaborative effort, LITHME has published an open access report 'The Dawn of the Human-Machine Era: A Forecast of New and Emerging Language Technologies': https://doi.org/10.17011/jyx/reports/20210518/1 <https://doi.org/10.17011/jyx/reports/20210518/1>. Accessible to a wide audience, the report brings together insights from specialists in the fields of language technology and linguistic research. The forecast report was authored by 52 researchers, and edited by LITHME's Chair Dave Sayers (University of Jyväskylä, Finland), Vice-Chair Sviatlana Höhn (University of Luxembourg), and the Chair of LITHME's Computational Linguistics working group Rui Sousa Silva (University of Porto, Portugal). It describes the current state and probable futures of various language technologies – for written, spoken, haptic and signed modalities of language. The publication is intended to be both authoritative and accessible, aimed at language and technology professionals but also policymakers and the wider public. It describes how a range of new technologies will soon transform the way we use language, while discussing the software powering these advances behind the scenes, as well as consumer devices like Augmented Reality eyepieces and immersive Virtual Reality spaces. The report also shines a light on critical issues such as inequality of access to technologies, privacy and security, and new forms of deception and crime. It is a result of unique collaboration, as LITHME brings together people from different directions in language research who would not otherwise meet or collaborate. LITHME has eight thematic working groups <https://lithme.eu/working-groups/>; and members from each working group have contributed to the report. Please share this message with anyone who may be interested, and please retweet us here: https://twitter.com/LgHumanMachine/status/1394716982587662339 <https://twitter.com/LgHumanMachine/status/1394716982587662339>. LITHME is a 4-year networking project, funded by the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST). It started in October 2020 and currently has members from all 27 EU states plus 25 other countries from every continent. The network seeks to bridge the gap between linguists and technology experts, so the former can benefit from better technological foresight, and the latter from better understanding of potential linguistic and societal consequences of emerging technologies. Find out more about LITHME's activities: https://lithme.eu <https://lithme.eu/>. And follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/LgHumanMachine <https://twitter.com/LgHumanMachine> All the best, Claudia Soria

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