WebNLG 2023: Call for Participation 
Special focus on multilingual NLG for under-resourced languages 
We are delighted to announce a new edition of the WebNLG challenge, which will 
take place in 2023. WebNLG 2023 will focus on multilingual generation for 
under-resourced languages. 

Registration 
If you intend to participate or if you download the data, please fill in this 
form 👍 
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfytc1rUMUOKrDc9vV658uiLh1_jUS7G0XesylaOLrfDYqXBA/viewform?usp=pp_url
 


Motivation 
With the development of large-scale pretrained models, research in automatic 
text generation has acquired new impetus. Yet, the current state-of-the-art is 
dominated by a handful of languages, for which training data is relatively easy 
to acquire. At the same time, the field has recently witnessed some encouraging 
developments which focus on generation for under-resourced and 
under-represented languages. This trend is paralleled by a growing interest in 
multilingual models and applications in NLP more broadly. 

The WebNLG 2023 Challenge is being organised in response to these trends and 
specifically addresses generation in few-shot and/or zero-shot settings for 
four under-resourced languages. 
About WebNLG 
The WebNLG Challenge consists in mapping data, in the form of RDF triples, to 
natural language text. The input is a set of RDF triples sourced from DBPedia 
for example: 
(John_E_Blaha birthDate 1942_08_26) 
(John_E_Blaha birthPlace San_Antonio) 
(John_E_Blaha occupation Fighter_pilot) 
where the corresponding output text might be: 
John E Blaha, born in San Antonio on 1942-08-26, worked as a fighter pilot 
The WebNLG challenge was launched in 2017. A second edition, in 2020, extended 
the task to Russian, in addition to English. 

WebNLG 2023 
The new edition of WebNLG focuses on four under-resourced languages which are 
severely under-represented in research on text generation, namely Maltese, 
Irish, Breton and Welsh. In addition, WebNLG 2023 will once again include 
Russian, which was first featured in WebNLG 2020. 

For WebNLG 2023, we are soliciting submissions encompassing a variety of 
approaches to automatic text generation, from neural architectures to 
rule-based systems. We especially encourage submissions addressing generation 
in few-shot or zero-shot settings. 

Data 
Development and test data is now available for all 5 languages, namely Breton, 
Maltese, Irish and Welsh (the target languages for WebNLG 2023), as well as 
Russian. Participants can download the development data; the test data will be 
reserved for the final evaluation. 

Data for each language was obtained by sourcing high-quality, professional 
translations of the original English texts in the WebNLG 2020 dev and test 
sets. 

Training data is also available for the original WebNLG English data and, as 
per WebNLG 2020, for Russian. In addition, we provide ‘noisy’ training data for 
the target languages (Maltese, Breton, Welsh and Irish), obtained via machine 
translation of the texts in the English WebNLG 2020 train split. 

Evaluation 
As in previous editions of WebNLG, submitted results will be evaluated using 
both automatic and human evaluation methods. 

I nstructions for participants 
Data and instructions for the task are available from the WebNLG repo: 
https://github.com/WebNLG/2023-Challenge 

Teams who submit systems for evaluation at WebNLG 2023 will subsequently be 
invited to contribute a short paper describing their approach and results. The 
task as a whole, as well as individual submissions, will be presented at a 
special session in an event to be announced later. 

General information about the WebNLG challenges can be found on the following 
URL: 
https://synalp.gitlabpages.inria.fr/webnlg-challenge/challenge_2023/ 

Timeline 
February 2023: First call for participation. 
Development data and noisy training data available. 
8 June 2023: Release of test data 
15 June 2023: Deadline for submission of system outputs. 
15 August 2023: Deadline for submission of short papers describing systems. 

The final presentation of results will be held during a workshop. Current plans 
are to hold this in September 2023. 
Organisation 
WebNLG 2023 is being organised under the auspices of LT-Bridge, supported by 
the Horizon 2020 Work Programme Spreading Excellence and Widening Participation 
(WIDESPREAD) 2018-2020 and the ANR funded xNLG Chair on multi-lingual, 
multi-source NLG. 
Claire Gardent, CNRS/LORIA, Nancy, France 
Albert Gatt, Utrecht University, The Netherlands and University of Malta 
Claudia Borg, University of Malta 
Enrico Aquilina, University of Malta 
Anya Belz, Dublin City University, Ireland 
John Judge, Dublin City University, Ireland 
Liam Cripwell, CNRS/LORIA and Université de Lorraine, Nancy, France 
William Soto-Martinez, CNRS/LORIA and Université de Lorraine, Nancy, France 
Contact : [email protected] 

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