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    ELRA - Language Resources Catalogue - Update  May 2013
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    We are happy to announce that 10 new Pronunciation Dictionaries and     1 new Evaluation Package are now available in our catalogue. 
   
    The GlobalPhone Pronunciation Dictionaries:     GlobalPhone is a multilingual speech and text database collected at     Karlsruhe University, Germany. The GlobalPhone pronunciation     dictionaries contain the pronunciations of all word forms found in     the transcription data of the GlobalPhone speech & text     database. The pronunciation dictionaries are currently available in     10 languages: Arabic (29230 entries/27059 words), Bulgarian (20193     entries), Czech (33049 entries/32942 words), French (36837     entries/20710 words), German (48979 entries/46035 words), Hausa     (42662 entries/42079 words), Japanese (18094 entries), Polish (36484     entries), Portuguese (Brazilian) (54146 entries/54130 words) and     Swedish (about 25000 entries). Other 8 languages will also be     released: Chinese-Mandarin, Croatian, Korean, Russian, Spanish     (Latin American), Thai, Turkish, and Vietnamese.
   
    Special prices are offered for a combined purchase of several     GlobalPhone languages.
   
    Available GlobalPhone Pronuncation Dictionaries are listed below     (click on the links for further details):
    ELRA-S0340 GlobalPhone French Pronunciation Dictionary
    For more information, see: http://catalog.elra.info/product_info.php?products_id=1197
    ELRA-S0341 GlobalPhone German Pronunciation Dictionary
    For more information, see: http://catalog.elra.info/product_info.php?products_id=1198
    ELRA-S0348 GlobalPhone Japanese Pronunciation Dictionary
    For more information, see: http://catalog.elra.info/product_info.php?products_id=1199
    ELRA-S0350 GlobalPhone Arabic Pronunciation Dictionary
    For more information, see: http://catalog.elra.info/product_info.php?products_id=1200
    ELRA-S0351 GlobalPhone Bulgarian Pronunciation Dictionary
    For more information, see: http://catalog.elra.info/product_info.php?products_id=1201
    ELRA-S0352 GlobalPhone Czech Pronunciation Dictionary
    For more information, see: http://catalog.elra.info/product_info.php?products_id=1202
    ELRA-S0353 GlobalPhone Hausa Pronunciation Dictionary
    For more information, see: http://catalog.elra.info/product_info.php?products_id=1203
    ELRA-S0354 GlobalPhone Polish Pronunciation Dictionary
    For more information, see: http://catalog.elra.info/product_info.php?products_id=1204
    ELRA-S0355 GlobalPhone Portuguese (Brazilian) Pronunciation       Dictionary
    For more information, see: http://catalog.elra.info/product_info.php?products_id=1205
    ELRA-S0356 GlobalPhone Swedish Pronunciation Dictionary
    For more information, see: http://catalog.elra.info/product_info.php?products_id=1206
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    ELRA-E0041 CHIL 2007+ Evaluation Package
    The CHIL Seminars are scientific presentations given by students,     faculty members or invited speakers in the field of multimodal     interfaces and speech processing. The language is European English     spoken by non native speakers. The recordings comprise the     following: videos of the speaker and the audience from 4 fixed     cameras, frontal close ups of the speaker, close talking and     far-field microphone data of the speaker’s voice and background     sounds.
    The CHIL 2007+ Evaluation Package includes: 1) CHIL 2007 Evaluation     Package (see ELRA-E0033) and 2) additional annotations which have     been created within the scope of the Metanet4u Project (ICT PSP No     270893), sponsored by the European Commission.
    For more information, see: http://catalog.elra.info/product_info.php?products_id=1196
   
   
    For more information on the catalogue, please contact Valérie     Mapelli mailto:mapelli@elda.org
   
    Visit our On-line Catalogue: http://catalog.elra.info
    Visit the Universal Catalogue: http://universal.elra.info
    Archives of ELRA Language Resources Catalogue Updates: http://www.elra.info/LRs-Announcements.html
   

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ELRA releases free Language Resources
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Anticipating users’ expectations, ELRA has decided to offer a large number of resources for free for Academic research use. Such an offer consists of several sets of speech, text and multimodal resources that are regularly released, for free, as soon as legal aspects are cleared. A first set was released in May 2012 at the occasion of LREC 2012. A second set is now being released.

Whenever this is permitted by our licences, please feel free to use these resources for deriving new resources and depositing them with the ELRA catalogue for community re-use.

Over the last decade, ELRA has compiled a large list of resources into its Catalogue of LRs. ELRA has negotiated distribution rights with the LR owners and made such resources available under fair conditions and within a clear legal framework. Following this initiative, ELRA has also worked on LR discovery and identification with a dedicated team which investigated and listed existing and valuable resources in its 'Universal Catalogue', a list of resources that could be negotiated on a case-by-case basis. At LREC 2010, ELRA introduced the LRE Map, an inventory of LRs, whether developed or used, that were described in LREC papers. This huge inventory listed by the authors themselves constitutes the first 'community-built' catalogue of existing or emerging resources, constantly enriched and updated at major conferences.

Considering the latest trends on easing the sharing of LRs, from both legal and commercial points of view, ELRA is taking a major role in META-SHARE, a large European open infrastructure for sharing LRs. This infrastructure will allow LR owners, providers and distributors to distribute their LRs through an additional and cost-effective channel.

To obtain the available sets of LRs, please visit the web page below and follow the instructions given online:
http://www.elra.info/Free-LRs,26.html

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In this                 newsletter:

-              Mixer 6 now available!  -
         
          -         
           Fall 2013 LDC Data           Scholarship Program - deadline approaching!  -

-           LDC at Interspeech 2013,           Lyon France  -

New publications:

-          GALE Phase 2 Chinese         Broadcast Conversation Parallel Text Part 2   -
     
      -  MADCAT Phase 3 Training Set  -

-  Mixer 6 Speech  -

      The release of Mixer 6 Speech this month marks the first time in       close to a decade that LDC has made available a large-scale speech       training data collection. Representing more than 15,000 hours of       speech from over 500 speakers, Mixer 6 follows in the footsteps of       the Switchboard and Fisher studies by providing a large database       of rich telephone conversations with the addition of subject       interviews and transcript readings.  Participants were native       American English speakers local to the Philadelphia area,       providing further scope for a variety of research tasks.  Mixer 6       Speech is a members-only release and a great reason to join the       consortium. In addition to this substantial resource, members        enjoy rights to other data released in 2013 and can license older       publications at reduced fees. Please see the full
        description of Mixer 6 Speech.

Fall         2013 LDC Data Scholarship Program - deadline approaching!

The deadline for the Fall 2013 LDC Data       Scholarship Program is one month away!   Student applications are       being accepted now through September
        16, 2013, 11:59PM EST.  The LDC Data       Scholarship program provides university students with access to       LDC data at no cost.  This program is open to students pursuing       both undergraduate and graduate studies in an accredited college       or university. LDC Data Scholarships are not restricted to any       particular field of study; however, students must demonstrate a       well-developed research agenda and a bona fide inability to pay.       
     
      Students will need to complete an application which consists of a       data use proposal and letter of support from their adviser.  For       further information on application materials and program rules,       please visit the LDC Data         Scholarship page. 

Students can email their applications to the LDC Data         Scholarship program. Decisions will be sent by email from       the same address.

      LDC at           Interspeech 2013, Lyon France

LDC will once         again be exhibiting at Interspeech held this year August 25-29 in Lyon.         Please stop by LDC’s booth to to learn about recent developments         at the Consortium, including new publications.

Also, be on         the lookout for the following presentations:

·                 Speech Activity Detection on YouTube Using Deep Neural Networks      

     

o   Neville           Ryant, Mark Liberman, Jiahong Yuan (all LDC)

     

o   Monday           26 August, Poster 6,  16.00
          – 18.00

     

o   Room:           Forum 6
       

   

·         The         Spectral Dynamics of Vowels in Mandarin Chinese

     

o   Jiahong           Yuan

     

o   Tuesday           27 August, Oral 17, 14.00 – 16.00

     

o   Room:           Gratte-Ciel 3
         
       

   

·                 Automatic Phonetic Segmentation using Boundary Models

     

o   Jiahong           Yuan (LDC), Neville Ryant (LDC), Mark Liberman (LDC), Andrea           Stolcke, Vikramjit Mitre, Wen Wang

     

o             Wednesday 28 August, Oral 32, 14.00 – 16.00

     

o   Room:           Gratte-Ciel 3

   

LDC will         continue to post conference updates via our Facebook page. We hope to see you there!

New
          publications:

(1)GALE Phase
        2 Chinese Broadcast Conversation Parallel Text Part 2 was       developed by LDC. Along with other corpora, the parallel text in       this release comprised training data for Phase 2 of the DARPA GALE       (Global Autonomous Language Exploitation) Program. This corpus       contains Chinese source text and corresponding English       translations selected from broadcast conversation (BC) data       collected by LDC in 2005-2007 and transcribed by LDC or under its       direction.

This release includes 20 source-translation       document pairs, comprising 152,894 characters of Chinese source       text and its English translation. Data is drawn from six distinct       Chinese programs broadcast in 2005-2007 from Phoenix TV, a Hong       Kong-based satellite television station. Broadcast conversation       programming is generally more interactive than traditional news       broadcasts and includes talk shows, interviews, call-in programs       and roundtable discussions. The programs in this release focus on       current events topics.

The data was transcribed by LDC staff and/or       transcription vendors under contract to LDC in accordance with       Quick Rich Transcription guidelines developed by LDC. Transcribers       indicated sentence boundaries in addition to transcribing the       text. Data was manually selected for translation according to       several criteria, including linguistic features, transcription       features and topic features. The transcribed and segmented files       were then reformatted into a human-readable translation format and       assigned to translation vendors. Translators followed LDC's       Chinese to English translation guidelines. Bilingual LDC staff       performed quality control procedures on the completed       translations.

GALE Phase 2 Chinese Broadcast Conversation       Parallel Text Part 2 is distributed via web download.

2013 Subscription Members will automatically       receive two copies of this data on disc. 2013 Standard Members may       request a copy as part of their 16 free membership corpora.        Non-members may license this data for US$1750.

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(2)MADCAT (Multilingual
        Automatic Document Classification Analysis and Translation)         Phase 3 Training Set contains all training data created by       LDC to support Phase 3 of the DARPA MADCAT Program. The data in       this release consists of handwritten Arabic documents, scanned at       high resolution and annotated for the physical coordinates of each       line and token. Digital transcripts and English translations of       each document are also provided, with the various content and       annotation layers integrated in a single MADCAT XML output.

The goal of the MADCAT program is to       automatically convert foreign text images into English       transcripts. MADCAT Phase 3 data was collected from Arabic source       documents in three genres: newswire, weblog and newsgroup text.       Arabic speaking scribes copied documents by hand, following       specific instructions on writing style (fast, normal, careful),       writing implement (pen, pencil) and paper (lined, unlined). Prior       to assignment, source documents were processed to optimize their       appearance for the handwriting task, which resulted in some       original source documents being broken into multiple pages for       handwriting. Each resulting handwritten page was assigned to up to       five independent scribes, using different writing conditions.

The handwritten, transcribed documents were       next checked for quality and completeness, then each page was       scanned at a high resolution (600 dpi, greyscale) to create a       digital version of the handwritten document. The scanned images       were then annotated to indicate the physical coordinates of each       line and token. Explicit reading order was also labeled, along       with any errors produced by the scribes when copying the text.

The final step was to produce a unified data       format that takes multiple data streams and generates a single       MADCAT XML output file which contains all required information.       The resulting madcat.xml file contains distinct components: a text       layer that consists of the source text, tokenization and sentence       segmentation; an image layer that consists of bounding boxes; a       scribe demographic layer that consists of scribe ID and partition       (train/test); and a document metadata layer.

This release includes 4,540 annotation files in       both GEDI XML and MADCAT XML formats (gedi.xml and madcat.xml)       along with their corresponding scanned image files in TIFF format.      
     
      MADCAT Phase 3 Training Set is distributed on one DVD-ROM.
     
      2013 Subscription Members will automatically receive two copies of       this data. 2013 Standard Members may request a copy as part of       their 16 free membership corpora.  Non-members may license this       data for US$1000.
     
     
   

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(3)Mixer 6
        Speech was developed by LDC and is comprised of 15,863 hours       of telephone speech, interviews and transcript readings from 594       distinct native English speakers. This material was collected by       LDC in 2009 and 2010 as part of the Mixer project, specifically       phase 6, the focus of which was on native American English       speakers local to the Philadelphia area.

The speech data in this release was collected       by LDC at its Human Subjects Collection facilities in       Philadelphia. The telephone collection protocol was similar to       other LDC telephone studies (e.g., Switchboard-2 Phase III Audio -       LDC2002S06): recruited
      speakers were connected through a robot operator to carry on       casual conversations lasting up to 10 minutes, usually about a       daily topic announced by the robot operator at the start of the       call. The raw digital audio content for each call side was       captured as a separate channel, and each full conversation was       presented as a 2-channel interleaved audio file, with 8000       samples/second and u-law sample encoding. Each speaker was asked       to complete 15 calls.

The multi-microphone portion of the collection       utilized 14 distinct microphones installed identically in two       mutli-channel audio recording rooms at LDC. Each session was       guided by collection staff using prompting and recording software       to conduct the following activities: (1) repeat questions (less       than one minute), (2) informal conversation (typically 15       minutes), (3) transcript reading (approximately 15 minutes) and       (4) telephone call (generally 10 minutes). Speakers recorded up to       three 45-minute sessions on distinct days. The 14 channels were       recorded synchronously into separate single-channel files, using       16-bit PCM sample encoding at 16000 samples/second.

The recordings in this corpus were used in NIST       Speaker Recognition Evaluation (SRE) test sets for 2010 and 2012.       Researchers interested in applying those benchmark test sets       should consult the respective NIST Evaluation Plans       for guidelines on allowable training data for those tests.

The collection contains 4,410 recordings made       via the public telephone network and 1,425 sessions of multiple       microphone recordings in office-room settings. The telephone       recordings are presented as 8-KHz 2-channel NIST SPHERE files, and       the microphone recordings are 16-KHz 1-channel flac/ms-wav files.    

Mixer 6 Speech is distributed on one hard       drive.
     
      2013 Subscription Members will automatically receive one copy of       this data on hard drive.  2013 Standard Members may request a copy       as part of their 16 free membership corpora. As a Members-Only       release, Mixer 6 Speech is not available for non-member licensing.

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Appen ButlerHill 

A global leader in linguistic technology solutions

RECENT CATALOG ADDITIONS—MARCH 2012

1. Speech Databases

1.1 Telephony

2. Pronunciation Lexica

Appen Butler Hill has considerable experience in providing a variety of lexicon types. These include:

 Pronunciation Lexica providing phonemic representation, syllabification, and stress (primary and secondary as appropriate)

 Part-of-speech tagged Lexica providing grammatical and semantic labels

 Other reference text based materials including spelling/mis-spelling lists, spell-check dictionar-ies, mappings of colloquial language to standard forms, orthographic normalization lists.

Over a period of 15 years, Appen Butler Hill has generated a significant volume of licensable material for a wide range of languages. For holdings information in a given language or to discuss any customized development efforts, please contact: sales@appenbutlerhill.com

4. Other Language Resources

 Morphological Analyzers – Farsi/Persian & Urdu

 Arabic Thesaurus

 Language Analysis Documentation – multiple languages

For additional information on these resources, please contact: sales@appenbutlerhill.com

5. Customized Requests and Package Configurations

Appen Butler Hill is committed to providing a low risk, high quality, reliable solution and has worked in 130+ languages to-date supporting both large global corporations and Government organizations.

We would be glad to discuss to any customized requests or package configurations and prepare a cus-tomized proposal to meet your needs.

                                                         www.appenbutlerhill.com

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We are happy to announce the release of DEMAND, a set of real-world
16-channel noise recordings designed for the evaluation of microphone
array processing techniques.

http://www.irisa.fr/metiss/DEMAND/

1.5 h of noise data were recorded in 18 different indoor and outdoor
environments and are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

Joachim Thiemann (CNRS - IRISA)
Nobutaka Ito (University of Tokyo)
Emmanuel Vincent (Inria Nancy - Grand Est)

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