Phil Humnicky/GU
The 6th Conference of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas
September 28 - October 2, 2004
Phil Humnicky/GU |
AMTA-2004 The 6th Conference of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas |
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| Georgetown University, Washington DC September 28 - October 2, 2004 |
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AMTA 2004 Call for Papers6th Biennial Conference Call for Papers | Tutorials | Roundtables | Workshops | Exhibitors Theme: From Real Users to Research The previous conference in this series (AMTA 2002) took up the theme “From Research to Real Users” which asked participants to explore why the research conducted on machine translation doesn’t seem to be moving to the marketplace. The past two years have seen the beginnings of change in this, as some research groups with data-driven translation systems are commercializing their work, and rule-based machine translation systems are introducing data-driven techniques to the mix in their products. What about quality? Research systems have made exciting advances in recent years. Developers and analysts say that commercial MT system MT quality has improved significantly as well. There are some exciting commercial deployments out there too making use of it. But the larger market seems as wary as ever and wants more evidence. How will these general advances in quality yield the results needed for the specialized applications, environments, and subject domains that make up the real market? Are there inherent limits on achievable quality? Does this vary by application? How are people using MT today? Lots of innovative applications are emerging, and you can see them demonstrated along with emerging research systems in our half-day Research and Deployment showcase Thursday afternoon, September 30. The new applications typically include MT embedded in a larger toolset or workflow designed to meet the real information needs of various communities. One of the founding goals of AMTA was to bring together users, researchers and developers in an ongoing dialog that gives members of each of these communities a chance to hear and respond to each others’ concerns and interests. AMTA 2004 will look at these problems from the perspectives of various communities, making a special effort to bring users and researchers together. We solicit submissions in English in the following five categories: 1. Research papers Unpublished papers describing original work on all aspects
of Machine Translation. Preference will be given to papers that include concrete
results and that address the theme of “From Real Users to Research.” More
purely theoretical papers may be better suited to the TMI-2004
conference, which will take place immediately after AMTA-2004 in Baltimore,
MD. Contact: Bob Frederking <ref@cs.cmu.edu> 2. MT Users Session Since AMTA 2004 celebrates the 50th anniversary of machine translation’s transition from theory to its first implementation and use, the program committee is extending this special invitation to users of machine translation (MT) technology. Please share your MT experiences at the conference during a special program track devoted to how MT technology is used in government, in industry, in an educational setting, or for personal use. Papers are solicited from individuals and institutions that are “hands-on” users of MT. Joint presentations by MT users and their MT service providers are also welcome. The purpose of these sessions is to share positive lessons learned and provide a sense of what MT can actually do NOW based on the actual experiences of those who have put MT to use in real world contexts. Papers and presentations should address the following issues in plain, non-technical language: (a) why was MT considered (what motivated the decision to automate translation?) Screen shots, samples, workflow or anything that illustrates your MT experience can be included. User stories that emphasize real-time demonstration of the technology will also be considered for the ½ day MT deployment showcase. Contact: Kathi Taylor <kathrynbtaylor@comcast.net> 3. MT Research and Deployment Showcase Separate from the vendor exhibition, AMTA 2004 will include a ½ day showcase of MT systems from two categories that are not often seen at conferences: - University research systems – these may be running remotely and demonstrated over the internet or running locally on hardware provided by the developers. This category is limited to translation systems that are not commercially available Contact: Jennifer Decamp: <jdecamp@mitre.org> 4. Evolution of Machine Translation Since the conference coincides with the 50th anniversary of the GAT project, and will be held on the site of that historic experiment, we invite papers in a special category which explore the evolution of machine translation – how can we objectively characterize or measure the progress made and the remaining challenges? Comparison of MT output over the years, or key events, are also possible topics. Contact: Laurie Gerber <lgerber@languageweaver.com> 5. System Descriptions/Demonstrations System descriptions with optional system demonstrations: Approx. 25 minutes will be allocated per system description/demo. Descriptions may not be longer than 4 pages. The goal of a system description/demo session is to educate participants about the features and functionality of current and emerging MT systems. System descriptions provide an extended opportunity to present the details of research or commercial MT systems in a theater setting. Sales presentations are not appropriate. The following additional information should be provided in each system description:
If a system demonstration is included, please also provide the following information:
Contact: Kathi Taylor <kathrynbtaylor@comcast.net> General submission guidelines:
Tutorials at AMTA conferences provide an opportunity for the end-user experts and technical experts to share their insights in sessions with small groups of interested participants. Tutorials will be held Tuesday, September 28th, the day before the main conference begins. Tutorials provide valuable background information that helps participants get more out of the conference! We plan an exciting tutorial program at AMTA 2004, with tutorials focused on the interests of end users, decision makers, integrators, researchers, and MT developers alike. The deadline for proposing tutorials is April 30. Contact: Mike Dillinger <mike.dillinger@pobox.com> Two User-oriented and introductory tutorials have already been recruited
Tutorials Solicited:
Call for Roundtable/Panel Sessions AMTA 2004 is planning to offer one or more roundtable/panel sessions during the conference. These sessions will not focus on formally prepared MS Powerpoint presentations by each participant, but will instead focus on addressing and answering lists of prepared and distributed questions. The audience will also be encouraged to participate in asking questions during the sessions. The panel submissions should focus on topics that are current issues in the field today. It is the opportunity to offer an organized debate on such topics. Such round table sessions should consist of a minimum of 4 and maximum of 8 panelists who are actively involved and well-known for their work on the topic at hand. Initial submissions of roundtable proposals must include an abstract of the panel topic and goals, and name at least 4 panelists who have agreed to participate. Following the notification of acceptance, panel organizers have a period of 1 month to modify the number of participating panelists so that the conference schedule can be adjusted accordingly. The final deadline to propose roundtables is April 30. Contact: Laurie Gerber <lgerber@languageweaver.com> Submissions should be made to Mike Dillinger mike.dillinger@pobox.com by April 30th. They should include the title of the workshop, a proposed schedule (e.g. call for papers, recruitment of speakers) workshop activities (papers, hands on activities), the expected number of participants, and whether this is an ongoing or new workshop. Contact: Mike Dillinger <mike.dillinger@pobox.com> AMTA conferences provide a forum for researchers, developers, vendors, users, shoppers, funders and policymakers from the U.S. and abroad to learn about new developments and best practices in each area of machine translation. The organizing team is energetically working on attracting more users and shoppers to this event with targeted local, national and international publicity. The key to increasingly lively and interesting commercial events depends on bringing together the people who need the technology and the vendors who can help them. When we polled users, potential users, and funders about what would make them want to attend the conference, it was primarily a good variety of vendors to talk to! In addition to MT developers and vendors, we are particularly eager to include the following in the conference exhibition:
**NOTE EXTENSION OF EXHIBITS** For details on exhibition, please contact Walter Hartmann: wh@mtconsult.com.
Submission Intention Deadline: Please send by the indicated date in the conference schedule a short summary abstract of what is expected to be covered in the paper/presentation/panel session. Format: maximum two hundred (200) words, including title and name of author(s)/organizer(s)/panelists. The summary can be in a document (MS Word, TXT file, etc) or in the body of an e-mail message.
amta2004@amtaweb.org |