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IRO.UMontreal.CA>COLING-ACL'98 LAST CALL FOR PARTICIPATION --------------------------- Avoid the line-ups and hassle of on-site registration! Pre-register for COLING-ACL'98 before you come to Montreal via the online registration form available on the conference Web site: http://coling-acl98.iro.umontreal.ca Detailed instructions are provided on the registration form. We look forward to seeing you in Montreal! The COLING-ACL'98 Organizing CommitteMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
ISI.EDU>Coling-ACL '98 Workshop MULTILINGUAL INFORMATION MANAGEMENT: CURRENT LEVELS AND FUTURE ABILITIES August 16, 1998 Universite de Montreal Montreal/Canada The Coling/ACL workshop on Multilingual Information Management is a follow-on to an NSF-sponsored workshop held in conjunction with the First International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation in Granada, Spain (May 1998). The goal of the workshop was to consider the recent history and likely near-term future of a number of research areas pertaining to language that are related (but still semi-independent at present). The conclusions have been gathered into a report, to be submitted to the NSF, LE, and other funding agencies in Europe and North America, for their consideration in setting funding policies and goals. THE DRAFT REPORT IS NOW AVAILABLE AT http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ref/mlim/ At the Granada workshop, an international panel of invited experts focused on a set of questions in an attempt to identify the most likely and most effective future directions of computational linguistics research - especially in the context of the need to handle multi-lingual and multi- modal information. The COLING workshop, a follow-on, has the aim of opening the discussion to the computational linguistics community as a whole, to solicit the comments, additions, feedback, and contributions of everyone. TO REGISTER, CONSULT THE COLING/ACL HOME PAGE AT http://coling-acl98.iro.umontreal.ca/ WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION The development of natural language applications which handle multi- lingual and multi-modal information is the next major challenge facing the field of computational linguistics. Over the past 50 years, a variety of language-related capabilities has been developed in areas such as machine translation, information retrieval, and speech recognition, together with core capabilities such as information extraction, summarization, parsing, generation, multimedia planning and integration, statistics-based methods, ontologies, lexicon construction and lexical representations, and grammar. The next few years will require the extension of these technologies to encompass multi-lingual and multi-modal information. Extending current technologies will require integration of the various capabilities into multi-functional natural language systems. However, there is today no clear vision of how these technologies could or should be assembled into a coherent framework. What would be involved in connecting a speech recognition system to an information retrieval engine, and then using machine translation and summarization software to process the retrieved text? How can traditional parsing and generation be enhanced with statistical techniques? What would be the effect of carefully crafted lexicons on traditional information retrieval? The workshop is organized as a series of discussion sessions, each one devoted to one aspect of computational language, initiated by a report of the discussions at the Granada workshop (a report summarizing the discussions at Granada is available; see below). Enough time for discussion has been scheduled. The discussion will focus on the following fundamental questions: 1. What is the current level of capability in each of the major areas of the field dealing with language and related media of human communication? 2. How can (some of) these functions be integrated in the near future, and what kind of systems will result? 3. What are the major considerations for extending these functions to handle multi-lingual and multi-modal information, particularly in integrated systems of the type envisioned in (2)? In particular, we will consider these questions in relation to the following areas: o multi-lingual resources (lexicons, ontologies, corpora, etc.) o information retrieval, especially cross-lingual and cross-modal o machine translation, of text and speech o automated (cross-lingual) information extraction and summarization o methods and techniques (both statistics-based and linguistics-based) o speech recognition and synthesis o multimedia communication, as well as language and speaker identification o evaluation and assessment techniques for each of these areas o Government policy for future funding The initial findings of the report will form the basis of the discussion. The draft report is now available at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ref/mlim/ Major points raised in the discussions will be recorded and included in the report. We eagerly seek your feedback, comments, contributions, and assistance, to make this report as comprehensive and as accurate as possible! PROGRAM 9:00 - 9:10 Welcome and overview 9:10 - 9:55 Cross-lingual and Cross-modal Information Retrieval Moderator: Judith Klavans 9:55 - 10:40 Information Extraction and Automated Text Summarization Moderator: Eduard Hovy 10:40 - 11:00 Break 11:00 - 11:45 Methods and Techniques Moderator: Nancy Ide 11:45 - 12:30 Machine Translation of Text and Speech Moderator: Bente Maegaard 12:30 - 2:00 Lunch 2:00 - 2:45 Multilingual Resources Moderator: Martha Palmer 2:45 - 3:30 Speech Recognition and Synthesis Moderator: TBA 3:30 - 4:00 Break 4:00 - 4:45 Evaluation and Assessment Moderator: John White 4:45 - 5:30 Multimedia Communication and Language/Speaker Identification Moderator: Oliviero Stock 5:30 - 6:00 Government: Development Policy and Funding Moderator: Antonio Zampolli THE REPORT The outcome of the Granada and Montreal workshops is a report, originally commissioned by the NSF, to be submitted to the NSF, LE, and other funding agencies in Europe and North America. THE FIRST DRAFT OF THE REPORT IS AVAILABLE AT http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ref/mlim/ We eagerly seek your feedback, comments, contributions, and assistance in making this report as comprehensive and as accurate as possible! ORGANIZERS Robert Frederking Center for Machine Translation Carnegie-Mellon University Schenley Park Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890 Tel: +1-412-268-6656 Fax: +1-412-268-6298 Email: refMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue