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Call for submissions to the Users Workshop - MT Summit X
Phuket Thailand, Monday, September 12, 2005
Dear Colleague
The success of machine translation today depends very much on the
innovative people who are actually using it to solve real-world
problems. When MT users communicate their experiences to a broader
audience, their successes inspire others to use it and their hopes and
suggestions spark advances in R&D.
We need to hear your story about using MT: to show people how much
you've been able to do, to tell the developers what needs to be
improved, to help others avoid the problems you faced. We also need to
hear what you would like to use MT for and why you don't think it's
possible yet.
The MT Users Workshop at MT Summit X invites users to share their
experiences and opinions through presentations, a moderated
roundtable, and focused breakout sessions.
If you are not yet using MT, the Users' Workshop is a wonderful
opportunity to see if MT is right for your organization, and ask
questions to current users of MT. The workshop welcomes user's stories
about any application for machine translation, from any region of the
world. Presentations will be in English; however, please feel free to
ask the workshop organizers if you would like any assistance with
proof reading or rehearsing your presentation.
In addition to stories from users, the workshop will feature three
invited speakers who will provide introductory information for new
users, and technical information on how to use machine translation
successfully in different environments.
Invited Speakers:
- General introduction to MT
(Ed Hovy - USC/ISI)
- MT in commercial environments
(Jaap van der Meer - Cross Language/TAUS)
- MT for research/assimilation and communication
(Rod Holland - Mitre Corporation)
Workshop participants will exchange ideas and create messages for the
rest of the MT community in a roundtable session, and breakout
sessions. The messages for the whole MT community will be presented in
a Users' panel during the main conference that will be based on the
content of this workshop. Researchers and developers are invited to
attend the workshop and to participate fully in the breakout sessions
and roundtable. However, user presentations must be created and
presented by users themselves.
Because this is a forum for sharing practical experience, the format
of submissions is not restricted; however there are a few guidelines:
- Accepted submissions will be printed and distributed to all
workshop participants.
- Submissions must be printable on A4 paper, leaving a 1 inch margin
on all sides
- Submissions should be in a widely readable format, such as MS
Office, HTML or pdf.
- Submissions should include pictures to help the audience understand
the hardware and software components used together with MT, as well
as the human interactions and workflow.
- User studies submitted to the main conference may also be submitted
to the Users' Workshop.
Important Dates:
- Submission Deadline: June 3, 2005
- Notification to authors: June 24, 2005
- Final submission due: July 8, 2005
- Workshop organizers submit workshop book to publicity chair:
July 22, 2005
- Workshop: September 12, 2005 (mainconference, September 13-15)
Submissions and inquiries should be sent to workshop cochairs:
Laurie Gerber: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or
Jaap van der Meer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Please contact us directly to make sure you get email updates
about this workshop!
Background on the MT Summit Conference:
Phuket Thailand may sound like a long way to go to chat with
colleagues about machine translation, but we think you'll find that it
is a very worthwhile trip!
- The MT Summit brings together all members of the MT community:
users, developers, and researchers - from around the world.
- The goal of the Summit conferences is to enable the members of
the MT community to learn about advances in research and product
development, as well as to hear about the ways in which MT is being
used successfully in various environments. Participants share
stories of progress they have fostered, and can assess the status
of technology and deployment internationally.
- One of the most important functions of the MT Summit is the
opportunity it provides for researchers and developers to hear from
users of MT outside of a sales environment. The presentations by
users, as well as the suggestions and questions that come
spontaneously from users at these events provide insights and
inspiration that influence the direction of research and development.
- You'll meet other users of MT, and make friends you'll want to keep
in touch with for the rest of your career!
- The MT Summit is the biannual conference of the International
Association for Machine Translation and its three regional
divisions (Association for Machine Translation in the Americas -
AMTA, European Association for Machine Translation - EAMT, and
Asia-Pacific Association for Machine Translation - AAMT). The
location of the conference rotates between the three regions. The
last MT Summit was held in 2003 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The next
MT Summit will be held in 2007 in Europe.
If it is not feasible to submit a paper or presentation, we hope that
you will still participate in the workshop and conference, and share
ideas informally. We believe that your participation will benefit you
and your organization, as well as the whole MT community!
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Workshop Co-Chairs:
Laurie Gerber has been active in the field of machine translation for 18 years, including system
development, research, users and usability, and business development. Laurie has masters degrees in
East Asian Studies (Yale ‘82), and Computational Linguistics (University of Southern California ‘01).
She is currently Director of Business Development at Language Weaver, Inc., a startup company
specializing in statistical machine translation. She is President of the Association for Machine Translation
in the Americas (2004-2006 - www.amtaweb.org).
Jaap van der Meer is a partner in Cross Language N.V., an independent system integrator and
consulting company dedicated to language and translation technology. Until 2001 he was CEO
and President of ALPNET, one of the global leaders in localization and translation services.
Jaap van der Meer continues his professional involvement in the commercial translation community
via his role as an organizer of the Localization World Conferences. He is a regular speaker
at conferences like TEKOM, STC, SAE, TopTec, LISA, and Localization World on topics varying
from multilingual content management, translation automation and semantic web. He contributes
articles to various industry magazines and publishes his own Newsletter: "Translation Automation".
In 2004, Mr. van der Meer founded TAUS, the Translation Automation Users Society , of which
he is the director. TAUS is a non-profit association and forum exclusively for users of
translation automation.
