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ISCApad #186 |
| Tuesday, December 10, 2013 by Chris Wellekens |
3-1 ISCA Events
| 3-1-1 | (2014-09-14) CfP INTERSPEECH 2014 Singapore Interspeech 2014 Singapore September 14-18, 2014
INTERSPEECH is the world's largest and most comprehensive conference on issues surrounding the science and technology of spoken language processing, both in humans and in machines. The theme of INTERSPEECH 2014 is 'Celebrating the Diversity of Spoken Languages'. INTERSPEECH 2014 emphasizes an interdisciplinary approach covering all aspects of speech science and technology spanning basic theories to applications. In addition to regular oral and poster sessions, the conference will also feature plenary talks by internationally renowned experts, tutorials, special sessions, show & tell sessions, and exhibits. A number of satellite events will take place immediately before and after the conference. Please follow the details of these and other news at the INTERSPEECH website www.interspeech2014.org. We invite you to submit original papers in any related area, including but not limited to: 1: Speech Perception and Production 2: Prosody, Phonetics, Phonology, and Para-/Non- Linguistic Information 3: Analysis of Speech and Audio Signals 4: Speech Coding and Enhancement 5: Speaker and Language Identification 6: Speech Synthesis and Spoken Language Generation 7: Speech Recognition - Signal Processing, Acoustic Modeling, Robustness, and Adaptation 8: Speech Recognition - Architecture, Search & Linguistic Components 9: LVCSR and Its Applications, Technologies and Systems for New Applications 10: Spoken Language Processing - Dialogue, Summarization, Understanding 11: Spoken Language Processing -Translation, Info Retrieval 12: Spoken Language Evaluation, Standardization and Resources A detailed description of these areas is accessible at:
http://www.interspeech2014.org/public.php?page=conference_areas.html
Paper Submission Papers for the INTERSPEECH 2014 proceedings should be up to 4 pages of text, plus one page (maximum) for references only. Paper submissions must conform to the format defined in the paper preparation guidelines and provided in the Authors’ kit, on the INTERSPEECH 2014 website, along with the Call for Papers. Optionally, authors may submit additional files, such as multimedia files, which will be included in the official conference proceedings USB drive. Authors must declare that their contributions are original and are not being submitted for publication elsewhere (e.g. another conference, workshop, or journal). Papers must be submitted via the online paper submission system, which will be opened in February 2014. The conference will be conducted in English. Information on the paper submission procedure is available at: http://www.interspeech2014.org/public.php?page=submission_procedure.html There will be NO extension to the full paper submission deadline.
We look forward to welcoming you to INTERSPEECH 2014 in Singapore!
Helen Meng and Bin Ma Technical Program Chairs
Contact
Email: tpc@interspeech2014.org organizers.interspeech2014@isca-speech.org— For general enquiries
Conference website: www.interspeech2014.org
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| 3-1-2 | (2014-09-14) INTERSPEECH 2014 Singapore
It is a great pleasure to announce that the 15th edition of the Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (INTERSPEECH) will be held in Singapore during September 14-18, 2014. INTERSPEECH 2014 will bring together the community to celebrate the diversity of spoken languages in the vibrant city state of Singapore. INTERSPEECH 2014 is proudly organized by the Chinese and Oriental Languages Information Processing Society (COLIPS), the Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R), and the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA).
Ten steps to Singapore
You want to know more about Singapore?
During the next ten months, the organization committee will introduce you to Singaporean culture through a series of brief newsletters featuring topics related to spoken languages in Singapore. Please stay tuned!
Workshops
Submission deadline: December 1, 2013
Satellite workshops related to speech and language research will be hosted in Singapore as well as in Phuket Island, Thailand (1 hr 20 min flight from Singapore) and in Penang, Malaysia (1 hr flight from Singapore).
Proposals must be submitted by email to workshops@interspeech2014.org before December 1, 2013. Notification of acceptance and ISCA approval/sponsorship will be announced by January 31, 2014.
Sponsorship and Exhibition
The objective of INTERSPEECH 2014 is to foster scientific exchanges in all aspects of Speech Communication sciences with a special focus on the diversity of spoken languages. We are pleased to invite you to take part in this major event as a sponsor. For more information, view the Sponsorship
Conference venue
INTERSPEECH 2014 main conference will be held in the MAX Atria @ Singapore Expo.
Organizers
Lists of the organizing, advisory and technical program committees are available on line (here).
Follow us
Facebook: ISCA
Twitter: @Interspeech2014 follow hash tags: #is2014 or #interspeech2014
LinkedIn Interspeech
Contact
Conference website: www.interspeech2014.org
organizers.interspeech2014@isca-speech.org— For general enquiries
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| 3-1-3 | (2015) INTERSPEECH 2015 Dresden RFA Interspeech 2015
September 6-10, 2015, Dresden, Germany
SPECIAL TOPIC Speech Beyond Speech: Towards a Better Understanding of the Most Important Biosignal
MOTIVATION Speech is the most important biosignal humans can produce and perceive. It is the most common means of human-human communication, and therefore research and development in speech and language are not only paramount for understanding humans, but also to facilitate human-machine interaction. Still, not all characteristics of speech are fully understood, and even fewer are used for developing successful speech and language processing applications. Speech can exploit its full potential only if we consider the characteristics which are beyond the traditional (and still important) linguistic content. These characteristics include other biosignals that are directly accessible to human perception, such as muscle and brain activity, as well as articulatory gestures.
INTERSPEECH 2015 will therefore be organized around the topic “Speech beyond Speech: Towards a Better Understanding of the Most Important Biosignal”. Our conviction is that spoken language processing can make a substantial leap if it caters for the full information which is available in the speech signal. By opening our prestigious conference to researchers in other biosignal communities, we expect that substantial advances can be made discussing ideas and approaches across discipline and community boundaries.
ORGANIZERS The following preliminary list of principal organizers plan INTERSPEECH 2015:
LOCATION The event will be staged in the recently built Maritim International Congress Center (ICD) in Dresden, Germany. As the capital of Saxony, an up-and-coming region located in the former eastern part of Germany, Dresden combines glorious and painful history with a strong dedication to future and technology. It is located in the heart of Europe, easily reached via two airports, and will offer a great deal of history and culture to INTERSPEECH 2015 delegates. Guests are well catered for in a variety of hotels of different standards and price ranges, making INTERSPEECH 2015 an exciting as well as an affordable event.
CONTACT Prof. Dr.-Ing. Sebastian Möller, Quality and Usability Lab, Telekom Innovation Laboratories, TU Berlin Sekr. TEL-18, Ernst-Reuter-Platz 7, D-10587 Berlin, Germany Web: www.interspeech2015.org
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| 3-1-4 | (2016) INTERSPEECH 2016, San Francisco, CA, USA Interspeech 2016 will take place from September 8-12 2016 in San Francisco, CA, USA General Chair is Nelson Morgan.
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| 3-1-5 | CfP Speech Technology for the Interspeech App Call for Proposals Speech Technology for the Interspeech App During the past Interspeech conference in Lyon, a mobile application (app) was provided for accessing the conference program, designing personal schedules, inspecting abstracts, full papers and the list of authors, navigating through the conference center, or recommending papers to colleagues. This app was designed by students and researchers of the Quality and Usability Lab, TU Berlin, and will be made available to ISCA and to future conference and workshop organizers free-of-charge. It will also be used for the upcoming Interspeech 2014 in Singapore, and is available under both iOS and Android. In its current state, the app is limited to mostly touch-based input and graphical output. However, we would like to develop the app into a useful tool for the spoken language community at large, which should include speech input and output capabilities, and potentially full spoken-language and multimodal interaction. The app could also be used for collecting speech data under realistic environmental conditions, for distributing multimedia examples or surveys during the conference, or for other research purposes. In addition, the data which is being collected with the app (mostly interaction usage patterns) could be analyzed further. The Quality and Usability Lab of TU Berlin would like to invite interested parties to contribute to this development. Contributions could be made by providing ready-built modules (e.g. ASR, TTS, or alike) for integration into the app, by proposing new functionalities which would be of interest to a significant part of the community, and preferably by offering workforce for such future developments. If you are interested in contributing to this, please send an email with your proposals to interspeechapp@qu.tu-berlin.de by October 31, 2013. In case that a sufficient number of interested parties can be found, we plan to submit a proposal for a special session around speech technology in mobile applications for the upcoming Interspeech in Singapore. More information on the current version of the app can be found in: Schleicher, R., Westermann, T., Li, J., Lawitschka, M., Mateev, B., Reichmuth, R., Möller, S. (2013). Design of a Mobile App for Interspeech Conferences: Towards an Open Tool for the Spoken Language Community, in: Proc. 14th Ann. Conf. of the Int. Speech Comm. Assoc. (Interspeech 2013), Aug. 25-29, Lyon.
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| 3-1-6 | INTERSPEECH 2014 Calls for workshops, special sessions and tutorialsINTERSPEECH 2014 - SINGAPORE September 14-18, 2014
http://www.interspeech2014.org
The organizing Committee of INTERSPEECH 2014 invites proposals for workshops,
special sessions and tutorials around INTERSPEECH 2014, which will be held in Singapore
on September 14-18, 2014.
The theme of INTERSPEECH 2014 is “Celebrating the Diversity of Spoken Languages”.
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WORKSHOPS (submission by the 1 December, 2013) ******************************
The Organizing Committee would be pleased to host various workshops and satellite events
of INTERSPEECH 2014 in order to stimulate focus areas and research activities related to
speech and language. If you are interested in organizing a workshop, or would like a planned
event to be listed as an official satellite event:
More information on http://www.interspeech2014.org/public.php?page=call_for_workshop.html
Contact Dr Chai Wutiwiwatchai at: workshops@interspeech2014.org ***********************
SPECIAL SESSIONS (submission by the 31 December, 2013) ****************************
Submissions of Special Session proposals covering interdisciplinary topics and/or important new
emerging areas of interest related to the main conference topics are encouraged. Submissions
related to the special focus of the conference, “Celebrating the Diversity of Spoken Languages”,
are particularly welcome. Apart from a particular theme, special sessions should be the
opportunity for a format different from a regular session.
More information on
http://www.interspeech2014.org/public.php?page=call_for_special_sessions.html
Contact Dr. Tomi H. Kinnunen at: tkinnu@cs.uef.fi *************************************
TUTORIALS (submission by the 3 January 2014) **************************************
INTERSPEECH 2014 will host a number of high calibre tutorials covering interdisciplinary topics
and/or emerging areas of interest. Applications for tutorials that either introduce a new area of
interest to the speech research community or provide a condensed overview of an active area of
speech related research are strongly encouraged. Each tutorial will be of three or six hour
duration and is expected to provide a complete coverage of the proposed topic rather than focus
on individual research. More information on
http://www.interspeech2014.org/public.php?page=call_for_tutorial.html
Contact Professor Eliathamby Ambikairajah at: ambi@ee.unsw.edu.au.
The Organizing team
of INTERSPEECH 2014
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| 3-1-7 | INTERSPEECH 2014 Singapore Newsletter Chinese in Singapore Immerse yourself in Chinese culture, more than 2,000 km away from the People's Republic of China.
With more than 74% of Singaporean being ethnically Chinese, a journey to the tropical island for INTERSPEECH 2014 offers a great opportunity to discover the five-thousand-year of Chinese culture. One can get a glimpse of the vast diversity of Chinese culture from the cuisine, music and languages spoken within 700 km2 of Singapore.
Chinese Languages in Singapore Mandarin Chinese (华语) is one of the four official languages of the Republic of Singapore. It is also commonly spoken in many Singaporean households. Those who are familiar with Chinese languages will soon realize that the cultural mix of Singapore gives birth to a colorful variant of Mandarin Chinese: Colloquial Singaporean Mandarin (新加坡式华语), also known as Singdarin, which coexists with the official Standard Mandarin Chinese. Most of the Chinese Singaporean merrily code switch from one to the other depending of the context.
Spoken Mandarin
Singaporean standard Mandarin Chinese, one the four official languages of Singapore, is almost similar to its continental twin: PRC's Putonghua (普通话). Like other varieties of Chinese, it is an analytic language which follows a subject-verb-object structure. The acoustic unit: the syllable consists of an initial and a final (or sometimes just a final), which is encoded by a lexical tone. Mandarin Chinese consists of five tones (including a neutral tone) [1,2].
Vocabulary and grammar of the Singaporean standard Mandarin Chinese is almost similar to PRC's official language while the linguistic differs slightly. Singapore Mandarin has also a distinctive accent. For example, the neutral fifth tone of Singapore Mandarin is replaced by a distinctive ru tone due to the influence of Southern Chinese languages such as Hokkien, Teochew or Cantonese [3].
Colloquial Singaporean Mandarin, borrows a number of words from the many languages spoken in Singapore such as English, Hokkien and Malay. For example, basa means market,and originates from “bazzar” in Malay; deshi (德士) originates from taxi in English; kiasu (a characteristic of Singaporean culture that emphasizes one would over-prepare to ensure he succeeds) is adopted from Hokkien, which literally means afraid to lose.
Written Mandarin
The written form of Mandarin Chinese usually uses logograms: the Chinese characters (汉字) or can be transcribed using Latin characters. During the 1950's PRC proposed the simplification of tens of thousands of Chinese characters in order to simplify the writing and increase literacy. Nevertheless, traditional characters are still used in Hong Kong (香港), Macao (澳门) and Taiwan (台湾) and in the over-seas Chinese communities.
Among the various romanization systems, Hanyu Pinyin (汉语拼音) which is the most common, has been adopted by the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1958 and Taiwan in 2008. Other systems include Tongyong pinyin (通用拼音) and Wade-Giles system, both of which have been commonly used in Taiwan.
Until 1969, traditional Chinese Characters were used in Singapore. A Singaporean table of simplified characters, which differed from the Chinese Character Simplification Scheme of the People's Republic of China was then used for seven years until 1976. Some of the characters used during these seven years were unique to Singapore while some others differ from the ones used in People’s Republic of China. In 1976, simplified characters used in PRC were formally adopted in Singapore. Nevertheless, traditional characters are still frequently used in restaurants and shop signs due to historical reasons..
Evolution of Chinese languages spoken in Singapore
Singapore Mandarin has now replaced Hokkien as the lingua franca of the ethnically Chinese community in Singapore [4]. In the past, the majority Southern-Chinese immigration to Singapore made Hokkien the de facto common language (in 1957, 97% of Chinese Singaporean spoke a non-Mandarin Chinese language at home). The replacement of Hokkien by Mandarin was induced by the Government “Speak Mandarin” campaign (讲华语运动) starting in the 1979. Today, Mandarin is spoken in 47% of the Chinese households while other dialects usage dropped at 19%. Nevertheless, a large majority of Chinese Singaporeans speak or understand other Chinese languages, an example of multilingualism in Singapore.
Chinese culture in Singapore
Chinese arts and literature has developed in the context of the Singaporean multi-racial society and presents a rich diversity that especially expanded after the 1960's. For example, the recent award-winning movie, “Ilo Ilo” (爸妈不在家) directed from Anthony Chen, depicts the story of how a 10-year-old Singaporean boy forms a bond with a foreign domestic helper, who has become an unspoken yet important part of the family.
From a culinary perspective, most Chinese dishes in Singapore are adapted from Southern Chinese cuisine. For example, Hainanese Chicken Rice (海南鸡饭) has now become a Singaporean signature dish. Local Singaporean delicacies include bak kut the (肉骨茶), pork rib soup with Chinese herbs and spices of Hokkien and Teochew origin; yong tau foo (釀豆腐), a Hakka dish full of a variety of vegetables stuffed with fish and meat paste cooked in a light anchovy-based soup; char kway teow (炒粿條), thick, flat rice noodles stir-fried in dark soy sauce; hae mee (虾面)yellow egg noodles in a rich broth made from prawn and pork rib stock. Other classic Chinese dishes can also easily be found in Singapore: dim sum (香港点心) from Hong Kong (香港), Peking duck (北京烤鸭) from Beijing (北京) and spicy dishes from Sichuan (四川).
[1] Nancy Chen, Vivaek Shivakumar, Mahesh Harikumar, Bin Ma, & Haizhou, “Large-Scale Characterization of Mandarin Pronunciation Errors Made by Native Speakers of European Languages,” in Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech), 2013, 2370-2374 [2] Berlin Chen, Hsin-min Wang, and Lin-shan Lee. 'Retrieval of broadcast news speech in Mandarin Chinese collected in Taiwan using syllable-level statistical characteristics,' in IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 2000 [3] 林华, & 王倩. (2007). “Mandarin rhythm: An acoustic study,” in Journal of Chinese Language and Computing, 17(3), 127-140. [4] Leimgruber, J. R. (2013). “The management of multilingualism in a city-state: Language policy in Singapore,” in Multilingualism and Language Contact in Urban Areas: Acquisition development, teaching, communication (pp. 229-258). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singaporean_Mandarin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Singaporean_Mandarin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Singaporean_Mandarin#Phonology_differences http://limpehft.blogspot.sg/2012/04/what-about-singdarin-singaporean.html
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