LINGUIST List 10.180

Fri Feb 5 1999

Calls: Machine Translation, Virtual Reality

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Francis Bond, Theoretical and Methodological Issues in Machine Translation
2. Anton Nijholt, Interactions in Virtual Reality

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		 8th International Conference on
 Theoretical and Methodological Issues in Machine Translation
				TMI-99
			 August 23-25, 1999
			 Chester, UK
	 http://www.ccl.umist.ac.uk/events/tmi99/


	 Second Announcement and Call for Papers
 --------------------------------------- 
The eighth conference in the TMI series will take place over 
August 23-25, 1999 in the historic city of Chester, UK.

In addition to general theoretical and methodological issues, TMI-99
will have a major theme:

	 Modalities and MT: Where can MT be used?

Submissions referring to the above theme are encouraged. However,
substantial, original, and unpublished research on any other issues
relevant to machine translation and multi-lingual processing are also
welcome.

Details on submissions and submission guidelines, along with a Latex
style file, can be found on our web site <www.ccl.umist.ac.uk/events/tmi99/>.
Papers should be in English, not longer than 10 pages (around 5,000 words).


			 Important dates
			
Paper submissions due March 12, 1999
Acceptance notification May	 14, 1999
Final copies due July	 2, 1999
Conference dates
	 Tutorials: Aug	 22, 1999
	 Papers and Panels:	 Aug	 23-25, 1999
	 Workshops:		 Aug	 26, 1999

Tutorial Program (provisional):
- -----------------------------
Six half day tutorials are being offered on August the 22nd:

Introduction to MT and translation tools John Hutchins 
Localisation Reinhard Schaeler 
Translation workstations and translation memory Ian Gordon
Developments at EU translation service Dimitri Theologitis
Evaluation of MT systems Jorg Schutz
Acquisition of Knowledge about Sergei Nirenburg
 a Low-Density Language for Use in MT

Full details of the program, including a synopsis of each tutorial, a
schedule, and details of how to register, will be found at the web site.

Workshops:
- --------

After the conference (August 26th), we will hold two one-day
workshops. Both workshops are soliciting submissions on relevant
topics. Full details of the workshops can be found on their web sites.
A short description of each is given below.


Workshop: Constraints on Machine Interpretation
Conveners: Susanne J. Jekat (Hamburg Uni), Jan Amtrup (CRL)
Email: jekatinformatik.uni-hamburg.de, jamtrupcrl.nmsu.edu
Web site: http://crl.nmsu.edu/~jamtrup/tmi99/

Synopsis:

The translation of spoken utterances (MI, Machine Interpreting) is one
of the most challenging tasks within the field of MT. There are still
several phenomena which are unknown or insufficiently described and
are not accounted for in the systems currently available. These
phenomena affect all stages of processing within MT systems.

As a consequence, an MI system does not only contain the additional
components needed to analyze and synthesize speech, but the core
modules have to be adapted to the demands of speech-to-speech
communication as well.

The workshop ``Constraints on Machine Interpretation'' calls for
contributions relevant for the translation of spoken language,
including, but not limited to: Speech recognition, language
recognition, speaker identification; Prosody and its use in MI
systems; Analysis, transfer and generation of spoken input utterances;
Architecture and design of MI systems and their user interfaces;
Dialog behavior, design and analysis; Evaluation of MI systems.


Workshop: Problems and Potential of English-to-German MT systems
Convener: Claudia Gdaniec (IBM T.J. Watson Research Center)	
Email: cgdaniecus.ibm.com
Web site: http://www.research.ibm.com/people/g/cgdaniec/tmi99.html

Synopsis:

Many German speakers have had a chance, and a need, to taste
English-German MT translation through the many products available on
the market and through the growing opportunities on the
Internet. Reactions have been anywhere from acceptance to
disappointment to derision. This workshop is aimed at getting
developers, researchers, and users together for an opportunity to
present, discuss -- and ideally reach some agreement on -- the status
of, and desired and possible improvements to, English-to-German MT
systems.

The workshop will address the many areas of MT application: heavy-duty
translation of technical documentation; casual in-house and at-home
translation; on-the-fly Web page translation; MT in information and
knowledge management; MT in electronic commerce; Internet chat and
e-mail translation. There will be presentations of positive and negative
experiences with text types and linguistic quality as well as of
desired priorities in terms of linguistic domains and technical
requirements by users, developers, and researchers.

		 Important dates for workshops

Paper submissions due April 14, 1999
Acceptance notification June 1, 1999
Final copies due July 2, 1999



			 Conference Site

The conference meetings will be held at Chester College, in the city
of Chester UK. More information about the conference site can be
found at the web site: http://www.ccl.umist.ac.uk/events/tmi99/.

TMI-99 is supported by the European Association for Machine
Translation and by Aslib, The Association for Information Management.


TMI-99 Officers:
 Program Chair: Francis Bond, NTT CS Labs, Kyoto
 Local Chairs: Arturo Trujillo and Harold Somers, UMIST, Manchester
 General Chair: Sergei Nirenburg, NMSU, Las Cruces NM

Please address any further enquiries to the program chair:

Francis Bond			 <bondcslab.kecl.ntt.co.jp>
Machine Translation Research Group 
NTT Communication Science Laboratories 
2-4 Hikari-dai, Seika-cho, Soraku-gun, Kyoto, JAPAN, 619-0237
Tel: 0774-93-5313 (+81)
Fax: 0774-93-5345 (+81)
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FINAL CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

Workshop
INTERACTIONS IN VIRTUAL WORLDS

May 19-21, 1999
Parlevink Research Group
University of Twente/CTIT
Enschede
The Netherlands



INTRODUCTION
The Parlevink Research Group of the Centre of Telematics
and Information Technology (CTIT) is pleased to announce
a 3-day workshop on interactions in virtual reality (VR)
environments. Anyone dealing with theoretical, empirical,
computational, experimental, sociological and
anthropological aspects of VR environments that are
either purely artificial or use real world
characteristics is invited to participate in this
workshop. In this workshop the emphasis is on VR
environments that provide means for interacting with the
objects in the environment, with embedded information
sources and services (possibly represented as agents) or
with other users and visitors of the environment.

MOTIVATION
In recent years we have seen that the computer science
and the cognitive ergonomics communities have discovered
and are exploring the possibilities of VR in user
interfaces. In order to visualize available information
and to provide users access to this information, virtual
environments have been built such that users can find
and explore information, communicate with other users
and can communicate with objects and agents in the
virtual worlds.

This workshop emphasizes the role of VR in interfaces
and in environments in which people share knowledge and
experience and in which new forms of interactivity will
emerge. In particular we want to explore the role of
speech and language in virtual environments. How can we
navigate in VR using speech and language, how can we
model multimodal access to such environments, how can
we communicate with other humans and with artificial
agents in the VR environment, etc. The workshop is
organized in the context of the U-Wish project of the
Dutch Telematics Institute.

FORMAT
The format of the workshop will consist of keynote
presentations by experts in the fields of VR, dialogue
modelling and speech and language processing, combined
with presentations of accepted papers. All presentations
will be plenary.

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE
Researchers working in this domain are invited to email
a 400-words abstract (plain ascii format), together
with title, affiliation and keywords to
twlt15cs.utwente.nl. Invited and accepted papers will
be published in the workshop proceedings.


INVITED LECTURES
Niels Ole Bernsen (Odense University. Odense, Denmark:
Coordinator of i3net, the European Network for
Intelligent Information Interfaces. i3 was created in
1997 in order to take a human-centred approach to the
exploration of new, visionary interactive systems for
people in their everyday activities.

Lili Cheng (Microsoft Research, Seattle, Wa., USA):
Lead Program Manager in the Microsoft Research's Virtual
Worlds Group, working on the Virtual Worlds Platform.
At NYU, Cheng designed graphics and created the human
interface for one of the first participatory, real
time rendered 3D environments which was broadcast
tri-weekly from NYU. Lili is a registered architect
and designed commercial architecture in both Tokyo
and Los Angeles.

W. Lewis Johnson (USC, Marina del Rey, Ca., USA):
Director of the Center for Advanced Research in Technology
for Education at the University of Southern California.
His interests center on the use of artificial intelligence
and human-computer interaction in education and lifelong
learning. Lewis Johnson is co-editor of the journal
Automated Software Engineering. He is President Elect of
the Artificial Intelligence in Education Society, member of
the governing board of the Autonomous Agents Conferences,
Chair of SIGART, and member of the ACM SIG Board.

James C. Lester (North Carolina State University,
Raleigh, USA):
The primary objective of Lester's research is to design,
construct, and empirically evaluate computational
mechanisms to support HCI in educational and scientific
software. His interests focus on developing advanced
animated and natural language explanation systems that
facilitate learning and scientific analysis.

Stephen N. Matsuba (VRML Dream Company, Toronto, Canada:
Matsuba has authored a series of VR spaces for
Cyberstage Live: an on-line journal dealing with the
arts and technology. His interests are focussed on
multimedia and VR applications. He and others developed
a VRML-based theatre adaptation of Shakespeare's A
Midsummer Night's Dream.

Pierre Nugues (ISMRA-Caen, France)
Research of Pierre Nugues is focused on natural language
processing for spoken dialogue and user interfaces.
This includes design & implementation of conversational
agents within a multimodal framework.

PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Program Chairman: Anton Nijholt (CTIT, Enschede)
Niels Ole Bernsen, James N. Davidson, James C. Lester,
Stephen N. Matsuba, Pierre Nugues & Oliviero Stock


ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Local Chairman: Betsy van Dijk
Olaf Donk, Boris van Schooten & Hendri Hondorp

VENUE
The workshop on "Interactions in Virtual Worlds" will take
place in the computer science building at the campus of the
University of Twente, Enschede, the Netherlands. Hotel
accommodation is available at the campus and in two nearby
cities.

IMPORTANT DATES
March 1: Deadline for submitted abstracts
March 15: Notification of acceptance, Instruction for
 authors, Information on accommodation
April 15: Dead-line for camera-ready papers
May 19-21: Workshop

FURTHER INFORMATION
For further information, please contact Olaf Donk
(donkcs.utwente.nl). Updated information will also be
available at http://wwwseti.cs.utwente.nl/Parlevink/
Conferences/twlt15.html