International Workshop on Spanish Language Processing Technologies

The Computing Research Laboratory, with the cooperation of the Spanish Society for Natural Language Processing (SEPLN), is organizing a workshop on Spanish language processing technologies to be held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on Monday, July 21, and Tuesday, July 22, 1997, immediately preceding the International Conference on Theoretical and Methodological Issues in Machine Translation (TMI-97).

The purpose of this workshop is to bring together researchers in Spanish language processing from the Europe, North America and Spanish America in order to share ideas on current research and technology development, compile a list of resources for performing research and development in the area and to establish a network of contacts in the field. The size of the workshop will be limited to 60 participants (20 from each region) and the structure of activities emphasizes broad descriptions of research and development activities and infrastructure accompanied by ample discussions. Also included are several social events which will provide a more informal context for making personal contacts.

The program consist of a single morning and single afternoon panel session on each day. In addition, there will be organized lunches each day as well as reception after the first day's activities and a banquet after the second.

July 21

9:00-12:15: Panel 1--Research Activities and Interests

Summary reports of the research activities and interests from a number of academic, commercial and public R&D centers from each of the regions. There will be a 15 minute break at 10:30.

12:15-2:30: LUNCH

2:30-5:45: Panel 2--Technologies and Applications

Summary reports on current or planned R&D efforts related to the development of specific applications (Machine Translation, Information Retrieval, Query Systems, Information Extraction, Distance Education and Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Text Processing and Document Handling). There will be a 15 minute break at 4:00.

6:30-8:00: RECEPTION

July 22

9:00-12:15: Panel 3--Research and Development Infrastructure Summary reports on existing and planned infrastructure resources for supporting Spanish language processing R&D (dictionaries, corpora, lexicons, corpus analysis tools, language analysis and generation software). There will be a 15 minute break at 10:30.

12:15-2:30: LUNCH

2:30-5:45: Panel 4--Future Directions

Position papers on the needs for Spanish language technologies, the current state-of-the-art and the kinds of research (corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, artificial intelligence and language engineering) that will best support addressing those needs. There will be a 15 minute break at 4:00.

8:00: BANQUET

We are requesting that those interested in participating submit a five page (1200-1500 words) paper addressing one of the above panel topics and a brief two page (500 words) biographical sketch. Each submission will be reviewed by at least three members of the program committee each representing one of the regions. Submissions will be accepted in Spanish or in English and the presentations are expected to be in whatever language selected for the submission. We expect to provide interpretors at the workshop to facilitate cross language communication during the presentations and discussions. In keeping with the State of New Mexico, both Spanish and English will be official languages for the workshop.

Program Committee

David Farwell (Computing Research Laboratory, NMSU, USA)
Veronica Dahl (Simon Fraser University, Canada)
Jaime Carbonell (Center for Language Technologies, CMU, USA)
Evelyne Viegas (Computing Research Laboratory, NMSU, USA)
Joseba Abaitua (Universidad de DEUSTO, Spain)
Felisa Verdejo (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spai)
German Rigau (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Spain)
Ofelia Cervantes (Universidad de las Américas, México)
Randal Sharp (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Méx)
Pablo Accuosto (Universidad de la República, Urugua)
Horacio Saggion (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Important Dates

1 March:	Submission deadline
1 April:	Notification of acceptance
15 May:	Submission of final drafts

Send submissions to:

David Farwell
Computing Research Laboratory
Box 30001/3CRL
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, NM 88003
USA

email: david@crl.nmsu.edu

Location

The workshop will take place on the campus of St. John's College on the outskirts of Santa Fe. There will be dormitory housing available during the workshop and the TMI-97 for rather good rates for this area (about $50/person/day, $70/person/day with 3 meals) or at a couple of hotels in the center of town (about $80/person/day). There will also be a registration fee to cover the costs of the workshop and associated events (about $100/person). Because the cost of participation may be rather high, especially for academics and small business outside the US, we are actively seeking sponsors to help defray these costs. However, for now please plan on paying the full amounts described above.

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