CALL FOR PAPERS ============================== WORKSHOP ON THE REPRESENTATION AND PROCESSING OF SIGN LANGUAGES From SignWriting to Image Processing. Information techniques and their implications for teaching, documentation and communication. Workshop on the occasion of the 4th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2004) Date: 30-May-2004 (at the closing of the main conference LREC 2004) Location: Lisbon, Portugal Linguistic Sub-field: SignWriting, Computational Linguistics, Corpus Linguistics, Image Processing, Lexicography Meeting Background ============================== Sign Languages are the languages used by deaf communities for non-written communication. This kind of linguistic codes relies on the visual-gestural modality of communication. Sign languages all share properties which do not exist in spoken languages, especially through co-occurring sign elements. For storing and retrieving information, sign languages may be encoded and processed electronically. Different techniques are possible and have been proposed. The workshop will focus on the problem of representing sign languages electronically in order to facilitate communication among the deaf as well as between deaf and hearing people. Moreover, it will promote the documentation and teaching of sign languages to both communities and stimulate linguistic research on sign languages. The task of transcribing these languages onto electronic media as a main technique for storing, retrieving or communicating (email, telephone, snake mail, children's e-book) is technically and linguistically challenging. Recent advances in the field of corpus linguistics, image processing and the development of XML standards, promise to pave the way for a broader application of these techniques. The workshop will set forth to provide an introduction into the different approaches and techniques currently employed, discuss their applications and respective advantages. Preliminary Meeting program ============================== 30-May-2004 9:00-10:30: Presentations of invited talks - Richard Gleaves (Deaf Action Committee For SignWriting) - Thomas Hanke (Institute of German Sign language and Communication of the Deaf University of Hamburg) Thomas.Hanke@sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de - Carol Neidle & Robert G. Lee (Department of Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures, Boston University, Boston MA) 11:00-18:00: Oral presentations, poster presentations and demos Call for papers ============================== Papers are invited on substantial, original and unpublished research on all aspects of sign language representation and processing, including, but not limited to: *sign writing *corpus construction for sign languages *sign language dictionaries *sign language technologies *e-learning of sign languages *any topic related to sign language treatment and processing Submissions of papers for oral and poster presentations should follow the same style as the ones for regular LREC paper. The details can be found at http://www.lrec-conf.org/lrec2004/article.php?id_article=14. Demonstrations and related tools will be reviewed as well. You should send an outline of about 400 words. If a demo is connected to a paper, please attach the outline to the paper. The papers and demonstration outlines, written in English, should be attached to an email message sent to the following address (ostreiter at eurac dot edu). Please include the name and the affiliation of the author(s) in the body of the email message. The deadline for paper submission is February 11th, 2004. Notice of acceptance or rejection will be sent on February 24, 2004. We allow simultaneous paper submission to the workshop and the LREC main conference. If a paper is accepted by both the conference and the workshop, the paper will be presented at the conference, rather than at the workshop. The author(s) should notify the workshop chair. Papers will be published in the proceedings of this workshop (each workshop and the main conference have separate proceedings) and may, depending on the conference politics, be included into the the main conference CD-ROM. Organizing Committee ============================== - Antônio Carlos da Rocha Costa (Escola de Informática, Universidade Católica de Pelotas, Brazil): rocha@atlas.ucpel.tche.br - Carol Neidle (Department of Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures, Boston University, Boston MA): carol@bu.edu - Chiara Vettori (Language and Law, European Academy Bolzano, Italy): cvettori@eurac.edu - Christian Retoré (Laboratoire Bordelais de Recherche en Informatique, France): retore@labri.fr - Eva Safar (School of Computing Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, England): esafar@yahoo.com - Ian Marshall (School of Computing Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, England): im@cmp.uea.ac.uk - Marco Consolati (Cooperativa Alba , Torino, Italy): bigmark@mclink.it - Oliver Streiter (Language and Law, European Academy Bolzano, Italy): ostreiter@eurac.edu - Patrice Dalle (Équipe "Traitement et Compréhension d'Images", IRIT - Université Paul Sabatier France): dalle@irit.fr Important Dates ============================== 11 February 2004 : Deadline for paper submissions 25 February 2004 : Notification of acceptance to authors 18 April 2004: Deadline for Camera-ready papers 30 May 2004 : Workshop Contact ============================== Contact person: Oliver Streiter, Chiara Vettori Contact Email: ostreiter@eurac.edu cvettori@eurac.edu Workshop URL: http://dev.eurac.edu:8080/sign/index.html