Subject: coling / acl workshop on multi - lingual information retrieval

coling - acl ' 98 workshop multilingual information management : current levels and future abilities august 16 , 1998 universiti de montrial montrial / 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 ) , at which an international panel of invited experts considered these questions in an attempt to identify the most effective future directions of computational linguistics research - - especially in the context of the need to handle multi-lingual and multi-modal information . the follow-on workshop is intended to open the discussion to the computational linguistics community as a whole . * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * registration deadline is july 1 ! ! ! ! * * * * to register , consult the coling / acl home page at * * * * http : / / coling-acl 98 . iro . umontreal . ca / mainpage . html * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 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 will be organized as a series of panels reporting on the outcome of discussions in the granada workshop ( a report summarizing the discussions at granada will be available before the coling - acl workshop ) . ample time for discussion will be included . 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 o automated ( cross-lingual ) summarization and information extraction o multimedia communication , in conjunction with text o evaluation and assessment techniques for each of these areas o methods and techniques ( both statistics-based and linguistics-based ) o parsing , generation , information acquisition , etc . o speech recognition and synthesis o language and speaker identification and speech translation program committee khalid choukri , european languages resource association charles fillmore , university of california berkeley , usa robert frederking , carnegie mellon university , usa ulrich heid , university of stuttgart , germany eduard hovy , information sciences institute , usa nancy ide , vassar college , usa mun kew leong , national university of singapore joseph mariani , limsi / cnrs , france mark maybury , the mitre corporation , usa sergei nirenburg , new mexico state university , usa akitoshi okumura , nec , japan martha palmer , university of pennsylvania , usa james pustejovsky , brandeis university , usa peter schaueble , eth zurich , switzerland oliviero stock , irst , italy felisa verdejo , uned , spain piek vossen , university of amsterdam , netherlands wolfgang wahlster , dfki , germany antonio zampolli , istituto di linguistica computazionale , italy organizers bob 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 : ref @ nl . cs . cmu . edu eduard hovy information sciences institute of the university of southern california 4676 admiralty way marina del rey , ca 90292-6695 tel : ( + 1 310 ) 822-1511 fax : ( + 1 310 ) 823-6714 email : hovy @ isi . edu nancy ide department of computer science vassar college 124 raymond avenue poughkeepsie , new york 12604-0520 usa tel : ( + 1 914 ) 437 5988 fax : ( + 1 914 ) 437 7498 e - mail : ide @ cs . vassar . edu
