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ISCApad #187 |
| Saturday, January 11, 2014 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 January 2014
English in Singapore
Attending INTERSPEECH 2014 in Singapore you will probably be glad to know that English is spoken in any corner of the island. Indeed, it is one of the four national languages and the second language spoken in Singapore's homes. According to the last census, in 2010, 89% of the population is literate in English, making of Singapore a very convenient place for tourism, shopping, research or to hold a conference.
Historical context of English in Singapore
The history of Singapore started as the first settlements were established in the 13th century AD [2]. Along the years, Singapore was part of different kingdoms and sultanas until the 19th century, when modern Singapore was founded under the impulsion of the British Empire. In 1819, Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles landed in Singapore and established a treaty with the local rulers to develop a new trading station. From this date, the importance of Singapore continuously grew under the influence of Sir Raffles who, despite not being very present on the island, was the real builder of modern Singapore. Singapore remained under British administration until the Second World War and became a Crown Colony after the end of the conflict. Followed a brief period during which Singapore was part of the Federation of Malaya before becoming independent in 1965 and part of the Commonwealth of Nations.
From this history, Singapore conserved English as one of its four official languages as well as many landmarks that deserve a visit beside of INTERSPEECH. Amongst them, Singapore Botanic Garden, founded in 1859, is internationally renowned [3]. This urban garden of 74 hectares was laid there by Sir Raffles to cultivate and preserve local plants in the tradition of the tropical colonial gardens. Including a Rain Forest, several lakes, an orchid garden and a performance stage, Singapore Botanic Garden is a very popular place to enjoy free concerts on week end afternoons.
Other green spot in the “City in a Garden”, the Padang (field in Malay) was created by Sir Raffles, always him, who planned to reserve the space for public purposes. The place is now famous for the two cricket clubs founded in 1870 and 1883 at both ends of the field and the games that can be watched on weekends.
Amongst the numerous landmarks inherited from the British colonization, the most famous include St Andrew's Anglican cathedral, the Victoria Theater, the Fullerton building, Singapore's City Hall, Old Parliament house, the Central Fire Station and many black and white bungalows built from the 19th century for the rich expatriate families. Some of those bungalows, now transformed in restaurant, will offer you a peaceful atmosphere to enjoy a local diner.
The role of English in Singapore
English has a special place in Singapore as it is the only national language which is not a “mother-tongue”. Indeed, Alsagoff [6] framed English as “cultureless” in that it is “disassociated from Western culture” in the Singaporean context. This cultural voiding makes English an ethnically neutral language used as lingua franca between ethnic groups [5] after replacing the local Malay in this role [4]. Interestingly, English is the only compulsory language of education, and its status in school is that of First Language, as opposed to the Second Language status delegated to the other official languages. By promoting the use of English as working language, the will of the government is to not advantage or disadvantage any ethnic group.
Nevertheless, the theoretical equality stated in the constitution between the four national languages is not always present in practice. For instance, English is overwhelming parliamentary business and some governmental websites are only available in English. Additionally, all legislation is in English only [4].
Singapore English
The standard Singapore English is almost similar to the British English although very cosmopolitan, with 42% of the population born outside the country. Nevertheless, a new standard of pronunciation has been emerging recently [1]. Interestingly, this pronunciation is independent of any external standard and some aspects of it cannot be predicted by reference to British English or any other variety of external English.
The other form of English that you will hear in Singapore is known as Singlish. It is a colorful Creole including words from the many languages spoken in Singapore such as various Chinese dialects (Hokkien, TeoChew, and Cantonese), Malay or Tamil. Many things might be said about Singlish and another newsletter will be especially dedicated to this local variant. Don't miss it!
[1] Deterding, David (2003). 'Emergent patterns in the vowels of Singapore English' National Institute of Education, Singapore. Retrieved 7 June 2013.
[2] http://www.yoursingapore.com/content/traveller/en/browse/aboutsingapore/a-brief-history.html
[3] http://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5786/ , (on line January 7th, 2014)
[4] Leimgruber, J. R. (2013). The management of multilingualism in a city-state: Language policy in Singapore. In I. G. Peter Siemund, Multilingualism and Language Contact in Urban Areas: Acquisition development, teaching, communication (pp. 229-258). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
[5] Harada, Shinichi. 'The Roles of Singapore Standard English and Singlish.' 情報研究 40 (2009): 69-81.
[6] Alsagoff, L. (2007). Singlish: Negotiating culture, capital and identity. In Language, Capital, Culture: Critical studies of language and education in Singapore (pp. 25-46). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
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