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Sponsorship of activities

EAMT Sponsorship of Activities: Students’ edition (INSTRUCTIONS UPDATED)

Call for Proposals

The European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT) is an organization that serves the growing community of people interested in MT and translation tools, including translators, users, developers, and researchers of this increasingly viable technology.

As part of its commitment to promote research, development and awareness about translation technologies, the EAMT is launching a new call for proposals to fund MT-related activities led by students during 2021.

Purpose of the Call

The EAMT is planning to support various MT activities such as shared tasks, workshops, teaching and awareness initiatives, open-source initiatives, dataset creation and small research and development projects by its current student members. 

The EAMT particularly welcomes proposals from students in all levels of education, including undergraduates, postgraduates and PhD students. 

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • Recent developments in MT research.
  • MT evaluation methodology, metrics and results.
  • Launch of MT-specific evaluation campaigns.
  • New or prospective commercial users of MT technology.
  • MT environments (workflow, support tools, etc.).
  • Interaction between users and MT systems.
  • MT combined with other technologies (translation memories, speech translation, cross-language information retrieval, multilingual text categorization, multilingual text summarization, etc.).
  • MT for less-resourced languages: development, usage, etc.
  • MT in the social internet: new uses, new modes of development.
  • MT for crisis management. 
  • Training events on MT, particularly on recent developments.
  • Events to disseminate MT, especially to the wider public (including shared tasks).
  • Creation of datasets for MT research.

All proposals will be screened by a review committee that consists of EAMT Executive Committee members and possibly a few appointed external experts if necessary.

Submission information

Eligibility requirements

In order to qualify for funding, the individual making the proposal must be a confirmed student member of the EAMT at submission time. Applicants will also need formal approval from their PhD supervisor.

Membership information: http://www.eamt.org/membership.php

Selection criteria

  • The proposed activity should be of direct interest to the MT community at large: researchers, developers, vendors translators and/or users of MT technologies.
  • The proposal shall clearly describe the purpose of the project and include measurable mid-project milestones for which a report should be submitted (see below).
  • Preference will be given to projects which by nature will involve and be beneficial for several persons, as for instance conferences, seminars, workshops, shared tasks and tutorials.
  • Proposals with a significant, clearly identified impact on the MT community (through the development, dissemination or use of project results) are those most likely to be accepted.
  • Proposals that bring together different aspects of MT will be especially valued.
  • The proposal should be clearly justified as being technically and/or scientifically sound.
  • The quality and efficiency of the implementation of the proposal will be evaluated.
  • The budget should be adequate for the proposed objectives and the actual implementation of the activity.

Budget

EAMT anticipates funding several proposals for various activities. 

The total foreseen EAMT Budget for this call is around €4,000 to cover all granted projects. The maximum amount EAMT can grant for a single project will be €4,000. During the negotiation stage, budget adjustments may be required by the EAMT executive committee. This means that the EAMT may only offer to partially fund a project. 

A project being granted financial support by EAMT according to this call will receive 50% of the granted amount at the start of the project. The proposer will receive the remaining 50% when the mid-project progress report has been received by the EAMT Secretary and substantiates that the mid-project milestones are met, and furthermore provided that the proposer is still a current member of the EAMT.

Contact for enquiries

Carolina Scarton
EAMT Secretary
e-mail: c.scarton@sheffield.ac.uk

Submission procedure

Overview

Candidates should submit their proposals as a single PDF file, written in English, that is composed of the elements described below.

  1. Proposal description: 2-page maximum
  2. Person/organization experience: 1-page maximum
  3. Budget and project planning overview: 1-page maximum
  4. Supervisor’s letter of approval: 1-page maximum

Proposals should be submitted no later than the deadline (see Important Dates below) through EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=eamt2021 (Submission type: Project Proposals – Students). Authors are encouraged to use the template available at http://www.eamt.org/eamt2020-projects.zip. Templates for both LaTeX and Microsoft Word are available.

Detailed description of sections of the proposal

  1. Proposal summary (two pages) in English
    1. Complete contact information of candidate.
    2. A clear and detailed description of the proposed event or activity.
    3. A statement on why this event or activity would be helpful for the community and the development of your studies (you should establish a clear connection between this activity and your degree project).
    4. A statement justifying why EAMT should support this event or activity.
  2. Experience of the proposing person in the field (up to one page)
    1. It may include a list of experience and related skills of the participants of the team (your team may be composed by your supervisors and potential collaborators).
  3. Budget and project planning overview (up to one page)
    1. A breakdown of the costs estimated for the entire activity or event.
    2. Clear milestones and deliverables must be indicated.
    3. An identification of the support requested from EAMT and possible other supporting funds.
  4. Supervisor’s letter of approval (up to one page)
    1. A letter from your supervisor stating that they approve your project submission and that they will act as fund manager if needed (please note that EAMT needs to make payments into a research account set up at your institution).

Important Dates

  • Circulation of the Call: August 18, 2020
  • Submission deadline for proposals: October 16, 2020, 23:59 CEST *October 30, 2020, 23:59 CET*
  • Acceptance notifications and negotiations to start on: December 7, 2020 December 14, 2020

In case of acceptance:

  • Mid-project progress report due: June 30, 2021, 23:59 CEST
  • Final report and deliverables due: January 31, 2022, 23:59 CET

Additional provisions

  • Only complete proposals will be reviewed.
  • All information submitted with proposals will be regarded as confidential and will only be used in the context of this project.
  • Following the recommendations from the reviewers and EAMT executive members, projects may be approved with amendments that will be discussed during the negotiation stage.
  • The funded projects may be required to report at the EAMT events (e.g. Poster at the EAMT conference, a short progress report for the General assembly, etc.). If you think you will not have funds for attending the EAMT event you can add travel costs to your budget.
  • The EAMT should be acknowledged in all materials related to the project, activity or initiative.

No obligation to award the proposal

The EAMT shall be under no obligation to fund the proposals pursuant to this call for proposals. EAMT shall not be liable for any compensation with respect to candidates whose proposals have not been accepted. Nor shall it be liable in the event of its deciding not to award the proposal.

Sponsorship of activities

EAMT Sponsorship of Activities (DEADLINE EXTENDED)

Call for Proposals

The European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT) is an organization that serves the growing community of people interested in MT and translation tools, including translators, users, developers, and researchers of this increasingly viable technology.

As part of its commitment to promote research, development and awareness about translation technologies, the EAMT is for the tenth consecutive year launching a call for proposals to fund MT-related activities during 2021.

Purpose of the Call

The EAMT is planning to support various MT activities such as tutorials, workshops, teaching and awareness initiatives, open-source initiatives, and small research and development projects by its current members.

The EAMT particularly encourages proposals from early career researchers.

The EAMT particularly encourages proposals from young members.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • Recent developments in MT research.
  • MT evaluation methodology, metrics and results.
  • Launch of MT-specific evaluation campaigns.
  • New or prospective commercial users of MT technology.
  • MT environments (workflow, support tools, etc.).
  • Interaction between users and MT systems.
  • MT combined with other technologies (translation memories, speech translation, cross-language information retrieval, multilingual text categorization, multilingual text summarization, etc.).
  • MT for less-resourced languages: development, usage, etc.
  • MT in the social internet: new uses, new modes of development.
  • MT for crisis management.
  • Training events on MT, particularly on recent developments.
  • Events to disseminate MT, especially to the wider public.

All proposals will be screened by a review committee that consists of EAMT Executive Committee members and possibly a few appointed external experts if necessary.

Submission information

Eligibility requirements

In order to qualify for funding, the institution(s) or the individual making the proposal must be a confirmed member of the EAMT at submission time.

Membership information: http://www.eamt.org/membership.php

Selection criteria

  • The proposed activity should be of direct interest to the MT community at large: researchers, developers, vendors translators and users of MT technologies.
  • The proposal shall clearly describe the purpose of the project and include measurable mid-project milestones for which a report should be submitted (see below).
  • Preference will be given to projects which by nature will involve and be beneficial for several persons, as for instance conferences, seminars, workshops and tutorials.
  • Proposals with a significant, clearly identified impact on the MT community (through the development, dissemination or use of project results) are those most likely to be accepted.
  • Proposals that bring together different aspects of MT will be especially valued.
  • The proposal should be clearly justified as being technically and/or scientifically sound.
  • The quality and efficiency of the implementation of the proposal will be evaluated.
  • The budget should be adequate for the proposed objectives and the actual implementation of the activity.

Budget

EAMT anticipates funding several proposals for various activities. There are two categories of proposals. The member institutions’ category and the individual members’ category.

The total foreseen EAMT Budget for this call is around €10,000 to cover all granted projects. The maximum amount EAMT can grant for a single project will be €10,000. During the negotiation stage, budget adjustments may be required by the EAMT executive committee. This means that the EAMT may only offer to partially fund a project.

A project being granted financial support by EAMT according to this call will receive 50% of the granted amount at the start of the project. The proposer will receive the remaining 50% when the mid-project progress report has been received by the EAMT Secretary and substantiates that the mid-project milestones are met, and furthermore provided that the proposer is still a current member of the EAMT.

Contact for enquiries

For general enquiries please contact:

Carolina Scarton
EAMT Secretary
e-mail: c.scarton@sheffield.ac.uk

Submission procedure

Overview

Candidates should submit their proposals as a single PDF file, written in English, that is composed of the elements described below.

  1. Proposal description: 2-page maximum
  2. Person/organization experience: 1-page maximum
  3. Budget and project planning overview: 1-page maximum

Proposals should be submitted no later than the deadline (see Important Dates below) through EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=eamt2021 (Submission type: Project Proposals). Authors are encouraged to use the template available at http://www.eamt.org/eamt2020-projects.zip. Templates for both LaTeX and Microsoft Word are available.

Detailed description of sections of the proposal

  1. Proposal description (two pages) in English
    1. Complete contact information of candidate.
    2. A clear and detailed description of the proposed event or activity.
    3. A statement on why this event or activity would be helpful for the community.
    4. A statement justifying why EAMT should support this event or activity.
  2. Experience of the proposing person/organization in the field (up to one page).
    1. It may include a list of experience and related skills of the participants of the team.
  3. Budget and project planning overview (up to one page)
    1. A breakdown of the costs estimated for the entire activity or event.
    2. Clear milestones and deliverables must be indicated.
    3. An identification of the support requested from EAMT and possible other supporting funds.

Important Dates

  • Circulation of the Call: August 18, 2020
  • Submission deadline for proposals: October 16, 2020, 23:59 CEST October 30, 2020, 23:59 CEST
  • Acceptance notifications and negotiations to start on: December 7, 2020 December 14, 2020

In case of acceptance:

  • Mid-project progress report due: June 30, 2021, 23:59 CEST
  • Final report and deliverables due: January 31, 2022, 23:59 CET

Additional provisions

  • Only complete proposals will be reviewed.
  • All information submitted with proposals will be regarded as confidential and will only be used in the context of this project.
  • Following the recommendations from the reviewers and EAMT executive members, projects may be approved with amendments that will be discussed during the negotiation stage.
  • The funded projects may be required to report at the EAMT events (e.g. Poster at the EAMT conference, a short progress report for the General assembly, etc.), without any claim for additional funds.
  • The EAMT should be acknowledged in all materials related to the project, activity or initiative.

No obligation to award the proposal

The EAMT shall be under no obligation to fund the proposals pursuant to this call for proposals. EAMT shall not be liable for any compensation with respect to candidates whose proposals have not been accepted. Nor shall it be liable in the event of its deciding not to award the proposal.

EAMT best thesis award

2019 EAMT Best Thesis Awardee

Ten PhD theses defended in 2019 were received as candidates for the 2019 edition of the Anthony C Clarke Award – EAMT Best Thesis Award, and all ten were eligible. 36 reviewers and six EAMT Executive Committee members were recruited to examine and score the theses, considering how challenging the problem tackled in each thesis was, how relevant the results were for machine translation as a field, and what the strength of its impact in terms of scientific publications was. Two EAMT Executive Committee members also analysed all theses.

The year of 2019 was again a very good year for PhD theses in machine translation. The scores of the best theses were very close, which made it very hard to select a winner. A panel of five EAMT Executive Committee members (André Martins, Lucia Specia, Khalil Sima’an, Carolina Scarton, and Mikel L. Forcada) was assembled to process the reviews and select a winner.

The panel has then decided to grant the 2019 edition of the EAMT Best Thesis Award to Felix Stahlberg’s thesis “The Roles of Language Models and Hierarchical Models in Neural Sequence-to-Sequence Prediction” (University of Cambridge — now at Google), supervised by Bill Byrne and with Phil Woodland as advisor.

The awardee will receive a prize of €500, together with a suitably-inscribed certificate. In addition, Dr. Stahlberg has been invited to present a summary of his thesis at the 22nd Annual Conference of the European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT 2020: https://eamt2020.inesc-id.pt) which will take place in November (dates to be confirmed).

Mikel L. Forcada

EAMT President

Carolina Scarton

EAMT Secretary

Program committee

We would like to thank our reviewers that, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, still gave their time to review the theses and help us select the winner. Specially, Julia Ive, Iacer Calixto, José G. C. de Souza, and Jesús González Rubio that also acted as emergency reviewers.

  • Alon Lavie, Carnegie Mellon University
  • Andreas Maletti, Universität Leipzig
  • André Martins, Unbabel
  • Andy Way, Dublin City University
  • Antonio Toral, University of Groningen
  • Barry Haddow, University of Edinburgh
  • Celia Rico, Universidad Europea de Madrid
  • Christian Hardmeier, Uppsala University
  • Cristina España-Bonet, UdS and DFKI
  • Daniel Beck, University of Melbourne
  • Dimitar Shterionov, Dublin City University
  • Ekaterina Lapshinova-Koltunsk, Saarland University
  • Federico Gaspari, Dublin City University
  • Francisco Casacuberta, Universitat Politècnica de València
  • François Yvon, Université Paris-Sud
  • Frederic Blain, University of Sheffield
  • Iacer Calixto, University of Amsterdam
  • Jan Niehues, Maastricht University
  • Jesús González Rubio, WebInterpret
  • Joke Daems, Ghent University
  • José G. C. de Souza, Unbabel
  • Julia Ive, Imperial College London
  • Lieve Macken, Ghent University
  • Loïc Barrault, University of Sheffield
  • Longyue Wang, Tencent AI Lab
  • Lucia Specia, Imperial College London
  • Maja Popovic, Dublin City University
  • Marcello Federico, Amazon AI
  • Markus Freitag, Google AI
  • Matteo Negri, Fondazione Bruno Kessler
  • Mauro Cettolo, Fondazione Bruno Kessler
  • Miguel Domingo, Universitat Politècnica de València
  • Miquel Esplà, Universitat d’Alacant
  • Patrick Simianer, Lilt Inc.
  • Pavel Pecina, Charles University
  • Philipp Koehn, Johns Hopkins University
  • Qun Liu, Huawei Noah’s Ark Lab
  • Rico Sennrich, University of Zurich
  • Sharon O’Brien, Dublin City University
  • Sheila Castilho, Dublin City University
  • Vincent Vandeghinste, KU Leuven
EAMT best thesis award

The Anthony C. Clarke Award for the 2019 EAMT Best Thesis

The European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT, http://www.eamt.org) is an organization that serves the growing community of people interested in MT and translation tools, including users, developers, and researchers of this increasingly viable technology.

The EAMT invites entries for eighth EAMT Best Thesis Award for a PhD or equivalent thesis on a topic related to machine translation.

Eligibility

Researchers who

  • have completed a PhD (or equivalent) thesis on a relevant topic in a European, Northern African[1] or Middle Eastern[2] institution within calendar year 2019 and
  • have not previously won another international award for that thesis,

Panel

The submissions will be judged by a panel of experts who will be specifically appointed as part of the EAMT 2020 programme committee and which will be ratified by the Executive Board of the EAMT.

Selection criteria

Each thesis will be judged according to how challenging the problem was, to how relevant the results are for machine translation as a field, and to the strength of their impact in terms of scientific publications.

Scope

The scope of the thesis need not be confined to a technical area, and applications are also invited from students who carried out their research into commercial and management aspects of machine translation.

Possible areas of research include:

  • development of machine translation or advanced computer-assisted translation: methods, software or resources
  • machine translation for less-resourced languages
  • the use of these systems in professional environments (freelance translators, translation agencies, localisation, etc.)
  • the increasing impact of machine translation on non-professional Internet users and its impact in communications, social networking, etc.
  • spoken language translation
  • the integration of machine translation and translation memory systems
  • the integration of machine translation software in larger IT applications
  • the evaluation of machine translation systems in real tasks such as those above
  • the cross-fertilisation between machine translation and other language technologies

Prize

The winner will be announced at the same time as accepted papers for the EAMT 2020: the 22nd Annual Conference of the European Association for Machine Translation (Lisbon, Portugal, dates to be confirmed), and will receive a prize of €500, together with an inscribed certificate. The recipient of the award will be required to briefly present their research at EAMT 2020. In order to facilitate this, the EAMT will waive the winner’s registration costs, and will make available a travel bursary of €200 to enable the recipient of the award to attend the said conference. The prize includes complimentary membership in the EAMT for 2020 and 2021.

Submission

Candidates will submit using EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=eamt2020 (Submission type: Thesis Award), a single PDF file containing, in this order:

  • a 2-page summary of your thesis in English, containing:
    • your full contact details,
    • the name and contact details of your supervisor(s),
  • a copy of your CV in English (at most one page, plus a complete list of publications directly related to the thesis)
  • an electronic copy of your thesis
  • optionally, an appendix with any other relevant information on the thesis

By submitting their work, authors

  • agree that, in case they are granted the award, any subsequently published version of the thesis should carry the citation “The Anthony C. Clarke Award for the 2019 EAMT Best Thesis” and
  • acknowledge the right of the EAMT to publicize the granting of the award.

Closing date

The closing date for submissions will be the same as the deadline for EAMT 2020 research papers: TBA.

[1] Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia.
[2] Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates, Yemen.

EAMT conference

EAMT 2020 Postponed Until November

It is with great reluctance that we announce today the decision to postpone our annual conference in Lisbon on the week of November 2 to 6, 2020. The exact dates will be announced soon. In light of the current COVID-19 outbreak in Europe and subsequent travel and congregation restrictions being imposed by governments, after much deliberation, we felt the best solution would be to act without further delay and find a date later in the year with our current hosts, Unbabel.

Our obligation is to ensure a safe and successful conference for our members and the EAMT community. We strongly believe that moving the conference to November will allow us to achieve that.

What if you have submitted a paper?

The proceedings will be published in May as originally scheduled. This allows authors of accepted papers to have their current work published in the community as planned without waiting until November. At least one author per accepted paper must register for the November conference in order to have their work published in the May proceedings, as usual.

In addition, under the current circumstances we have decided to extend the call for papers deadline for another 2 weeks, until 25 March 2020. Those who have already submitted papers have the opportunity to revise their work if they wish to do so. Others who may not have submitted because of COVID-19 travel restrictions can submit their papers for the November conference and inclusion in the proceedings published in May.

If your paper is accepted for publication at the actual event in November, you will be able to include an update on your research during the presentation.

What if you have already made travel arrangements?

If you have already made travel arrangements and cannot cancel or rebook, please contact us at eamt2020@inesc-id.pt.

We apologize for any inconvenience this postponement may cause you. We feel that this is in the best interests of our community and are grateful for your understanding.

We hope to see you in November, and to receive your submission by 25th March.

Sincerest regards,

Mikel L. Forcada
EAMT President
General Chair of EAMT 2020

EAMT conference

EAMT 2020: The 22th Annual Conference of the European Association for Machine Translation

Centro de Congressos do IST
Instituto Superior Técnico
Campus Alameda
Av. Rovisco Pais, 1, 1049-001 LISBOA, Portugal
May 4 to 6, 2020
https://eamt2020.inesc-id.pt/

The European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT) invites everyone interested in machine translation and translation-related tools and resources ― developers, researchers, users, translation and localization professionals and managers ― to participate in this conference. If you envisage an information world in which language barriers become less visible to the information consumer, submit a paper on the topic that drives you and your work. Driven by the state of the art, the research community will demonstrate their cutting-edge research and results, and professional MT users in the language industry will provide insight into successful MT implementation in business scenarios. Translation studies scholars and translation practitioners are also invited to share their first-hand MT experience, which will be addressed in a special Translators’ track.

We expect to receive submissions in these four categories:

(R) Research papers

Submissions (up to 10 pages, including references) are invited for reports of significant research results in any aspect of machine translation and related areas. Such reports should include a substantial evaluation component, or have a strong theoretical and/or methodological contribution where results and in-depth evaluations may not be appropriate. Papers are welcome on all topics in the areas of machine translation and translation-related technologies, including:

  • Novel deep-learning approaches for MT and MT evaluation
  • Advances in classical MT paradigms: statistical, rule-based, and hybrid approaches
  • Comparison of various MT approaches
  • Technologies for MT deployment: quality estimation, domain adaptation, etc.
  • MT in special settings: low resources, massive resources, high volume, low computing resources
  • MT applications: translation/localisation aids, speech-to-speech, speech-to-text, OCR, MT for user generated content (blogs, social networks), etc.
  • Linguistic resources for MT: dictionaries, terminology, corpora, etc.
  • MT evaluation techniques, metrics, and evaluation results
  • Human factors in MT and user interfaces
  • Related multilingual technologies: natural language generation, information retrieval, text categorisation, text summarisation, information extraction, etc.

Papers should describe original work. They should emphasise completed work rather than intended work, and should indicate clearly the state of completion of the reported results. Where appropriate, concrete evaluation results should be included.

Papers should be anonymized, prepared according to the templates specified below , and no longer than 10 pages (including references); the resulting PDFs submitted to https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=eamt2020 (Submission type: EAMT2020 Research).

(U) User studies

Submissions (up to 10 pages, including references) are invited for reports on case studies and implementation experience with MT in small or medium-size businesses in the language industry, as well as implementation scenarios involving large corporations, governments, or NGOs. Contributions are welcome on the following topics:

  • Integrating MT and computer-assisted translation into a translation production workflow (e.g. transforming terminology glossaries into MT resources, optimizing TM/MT thresholds, mixing online and offline tools, using interactive MT, dealing with MT confidence scores);
  • Use of MT to improve translation or localisation workflows (e.g. reducing turnaround times, improving translation consistency, increasing the scope of globalisation projects);
  • Managing change when implementing and using MT (e.g. switching between multiple MT systems, limiting degradations when updating or upgrading an MT system);
  • Implementing open-source MT in the SME or enterprise (e.g. strategies to get support, reports on taking pilot results into full deployment, examples of advanced customisation sought and obtained thanks to the open-source paradigm, collaboration within open-source MT projects);
  • Evaluating MT in a real-world setting (e.g. error detection strategies employed, metrics used, productivity or translation quality gains achieved);
  • Post-editing strategies and tools (e.g. limitations of traditional translation quality assurance tools, challenges associated with post-editing guidelines);
  • Legal issues associated with MT, especially MT in the cloud (e.g. copyright, privacy);
  • Use of MT in social networking or real-time communication (e.g. enterprise support chat, multilingual content for social media);
  • Use of MT to process multilingual content for assimilation purposes (e.g. cross-lingual information retrieval, MT for e-discovery or spam detection, MT for highly dynamic content);
  • Implementing MT standards.

Papers should highlight problems and solutions in addition to describing MT integration processes and project settings. Where solutions do not seem to exist, suggestions for MT researchers and developers should be clearly emphasised. For user papers produced by academics, we require co-authorship with the actual users.

Papers should be formatted according to the templates specified below, no longer than 10 pages (including references), and submitted as PDF files to https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=eamt2020 (Submission type: EAMT2020 User)

(P) Project/Product description

Submissions (2 pages, including references) are invited to report new, interesting:

  • Tools for machine translation, computer aided translation, and the like (including commercial products and open-source software). The authors should be ready to present the tools in the form of demos or posters during the conference;
  • Research projects related to machine translation. The authors should be ready to present the projects in the form of posters during the conference. This follows on from the successful ‘project villages’ held at the last EAMT conferences.

Abstracts should be formatted according to the templates specified below , no longer than 2 page (including references), and submitted as PDF files to https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=eamt2020 (Submission type: EAMT2020 Products-Projects).

(T) Translators’ track

The use of machine translation by professional translators has an important social and economic impact due to the multilinguality of globalized societies. Translation practitioners deal with MT output in a wide variety of environments (inside or outside CAT tools, post-editing or drafting for inspiration, managing projects, training and improving engines) and, for this reason, they play a key role in the translation workflow and in the advance of MT.

This conference invites translation practitioners and translation scholars to share their views and observations based on their day-to-day experience through submissions reporting on issues such as:

  • Measurements of comparative effort (time/keystrokes/cognitive) in translation practices involving MT and their impact on the profession;
  • Impact of MT on translators’ work: processes, new invoicing methods (for example, using TER for matching), applicability;
  • Error analysis and post-editing strategies (including automatic post-editing and automation strategies);
  • Psycho-social aspects of MT adoption (ergonomics, motivation, and social impact on the profession);
  • The use of translators’ metadata and user activity data in MT development;
  • Freelance translators’ independent use of MT (e.g. for individual productivity and not necessarily a customer requirement);
  • MT and usability;
  • MT in literary, audiovisual, game localisation and creative texts;
  • MT and interpreting;
  • Ethical and confidentiality issues when using MT;
  • MT in various scenarios including health care communication, crisis translation, and climate change;
  • MT in the translation/interpreting classroom.

Accepted translator track papers will be published in the conference proceedings. Please make sure to consult and cite previously published work before submitting your paper.

Submissions (up to 10 pages, including references) should be formatted according to the templates specified below and submitted as PDF files to https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=eamt2020 (Submission type: EAMT2020 Translator). Please note that 10 pages is the maximum number of pages. Submissions of any length will be evaluated by the committee.

Paper templates

Use the LaTeX, Microsoft Word and LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org templates available at https://eamt2020.inesc-id.pt/#templates to prepare your submission.

Publication

Accepted papers will be published in an electronic book of proceedings with an ISBN number.

In addition, the best accepted papers will be invited to submit an extended version undergoing a lighter reviewing process, as regular papers in the Springer journal Machine Translation.

Programme

In addition to an invited talk (to be announced), the programme of the Research, User, and Translators’ tracks will include oral presentations and poster sessions. Accepted papers may be assigned to an oral or poster session, but no differentiation will be made in the conference proceedings.

There will also be a special Translators’ track, which will mostly take place on Wednesday. It will be organized around selected, very short oral contributions by individual translators, and will end with round table where the voice of individual translators will be heard along those of researchers, developers and companies using machine translation.

Conference chairs

Research track co-chairs:

  • Arianna Bisazza, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, the Netherlands
  • Marco Turchi, FBK, Trento, Italy

User track co-chairs:

  • Mary Nurminen, Tampere University
  • Lena Marg, Welocalize

Translators’ track co-chairs:

  • Ana Guerberof, University of Surrey
  • Joss Moorkens, Dublin City University

Local organizing chairs:

  • André Martins, IST and Unbabel, Lisbon, Portugal
  • Helena Moniz, INESC-ID and Unbabel, Lisbon, Portugal

General chair: Mikel L. Forcada, EAMT President, Universitat d’Alacant, Spain (also Project/Product chair).

Best Thesis Award

The EAMT Best Thesis Award 2020 for PhD theses submitted during 2019 will be awarded at the conference, together with a presentation of the winner’s work. Information for candidates to the award is available at: http://www.eamt.org/news/news_best_thesis2019.php. The deadline is the same as for the paper submission. Theses should be submitted to https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=eamt2020 (Submission type: Thesis Award)

Important Dates

  • Paper submission: March 6, 2020.
  • Notification to authors: April 3, 2020.
  • Camera-ready deadline: April 10, 2020.
  • Early-bird registration: April 17, 2020.
  • Conference: May 4—6, 2020.

All deadlines are at 23.59 CEST.

Sponsorship of activities

EAMT Sponsorship of Activities

Call for Proposals

The European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT) is an organization that serves the growing community of people interested in MT and translation tools, including users, developers, and researchers of this increasingly viable technology.

As part of its commitment to promote research, development and awareness about translation technologies, the EAMT is for the ninth consecutive year launching a call for proposals to fund MT-related activities during 2020. .

Purpose of the Call

The EAMT is planning to support various MT activities such as tutorials, workshops, teaching and awareness initiatives, open­-source initiatives, and small research and development projects by its current members.

The proposed activity should be of direct interest to the MT community.

The EAMT particularly encourages proposals from young members.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  1. Recent developments in MT research.
  2. MT evaluation methodology, metrics and results.
  3. Launch of MT­-specific evaluation campaigns.
  4. New or prospective commercial users of MT technology.
  5. MT environments (workflow, support tools, etc.).
  6. Interaction between users and MT systems.
  7. MT combined with other technologies (translation memories, speech translation, cross-language information retrieval, multilingual text categorization, multilingual text summarization, etc.).
  8. MT for less-­resourced languages: development, usage, etc.
  9. MT in the social internet: new uses, new modes of development.
  10. Training events on MT, particularly on recent developments.
  11. Events to disseminate MT, especially to the wider public.

All proposals will be screened by a review committee that consists of EAMT Executive Committee members and possibly a few appointed external experts if necessary.

Submission information

Eligibility requirements

In order to qualify for funding, the institution(s) or the individual making the proposal must be a confirmed member of the EAMT at submission time.

Membership information: http://www.eamt.org/membership.php

Selection criteria

  1. The proposed activity should be of direct interest to the MT community at large: researchers, developers, vendors or users of MT technologies.
  2. The proposal shall clearly describe the purpose of the project and include measurable mid-project milestones for which a report should be submitted (see below).
  3. Preference will be given to projects which by nature will involve and be beneficial for several persons, as for instance conferences, seminars, workshops and tutorials.
  4. Proposals with a significant, clearly identified impact on the MT community (through the development, dissemination or use of project results) are those most likely to be accepted.
  5. Proposals that bring together different aspects of MT will be specially valued.
  6. The proposal should be clearly justified as being technically and/or scientifically sound.
  7. The quality and efficiency of the implementation of the proposal will be evaluated.
  8. The budget should be adequate for the proposed objectives and the actual implementation of the activity.

Budget

EAMT anticipates funding several proposals for various activities. There are two categories of proposals. The member institutions’ category and the individual members’ category.

The total foreseen EAMT Budget for this call is around €10,000 to cover all granted projects (tutorials, workshops, teaching and awareness initiatives, open-source initiatives, and research and development projects). The maximum amount EAMT can grant for a single project will be €10,000. uring the negotiation stage, budget adjustments may be required by the EAMT executive committee. This means that the EAMT may only offer to partially fund a project.

A project being granted financial support by EAMT according to this call will receive 50% of the granted amount at the start of the project. The proposer will receive the remaining 50% when the mid-project progress report has been received by the EAMT Secretary and substantiates that the mid-project milestones are met, and furthermore provided that the proposer is still a current member of the EAMT.

Contact for enquiries

For general enquiries please contact:

Carolina Scarton
EAMT Secretary
e-mail: c.scarton@sheffield.ac.uk

Submission procedure

Overview

Candidates should submit their proposals as a single PDF file, written in English, that is composed of the elements described below.

  1. Proposal summary: 1­-page maximum
  2. Person/organization experience: 1-page maximum
  3. Detailed proposal description: 5-­page maximum
  4. Budget and project planning overview: 1­-page maximum

Proposals should be submitted no later than the deadline (see Important Dates below) through EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=eamt2020 (Submission type: Project Proposals). Authors are encouraged to use the template available at http://www.eamt.org/eamt2019-projects.zip. Templates for both LaTeX and Microsoft Word are available.

Detailed description of sections of the proposal

  1. Proposal summary (one page) in English.
    1. Complete contact information of candidate.
    2. Description of the activity or the event.
    3. Budget summary and identification of the requested support from EAMT.
  2. Experience of the proposing person/organization in the field (up to one page).
  3. Detailed proposal description (up to five pages – including references)
    1. A statement on why this event or activity would be helpful for the community./li>
    2. A statement justifying why EAMT should support this event or activity.
    3. A list of experience and related skills of the participants of the team.
  4. Budget and project planning overview (up to one page)
    1. A breakdown of the costs estimated for the entire activity or event.
    2. Clear milestones and deliverables must be indicated.
    3. An identification of the support requested from EAMT and possible other supporting funds.

Important Dates

  • Circulation of the Call: August 31, 2019
  • Submission deadline for proposals: October 25, 2019, 23:59 CEST
  • Acceptance notifications and negotiations to start on: December 13, 2019

In case of acceptance:

  • Mid-project progress report due:June 30, 2020, 23:59 CEST
  • Final report and deliverables due: January 31, 2021, 23:59 CET

Additional provisions

  • Only complete proposals will be reviewed.
  • All information submitted with proposals will be regarded as confidential and will only be used in the context of this project.
  • Following the recommendations from the reviewers and EAMT executive members, projects may be approved with amendments that will be discussed during the negotiation stage.
  • The funded projects may be required to report at the EAMT events (e.g. Poster at the EAMT conference, a short progress report for the General assembly, etc.), without any claim for additional funds.
  • The EAMT should be acknowledged in all materials related to the project, activity or initiative.

No obligation to award the proposal

The EAMT shall be under no obligation to fund the proposals pursuant to this call for proposals. EAMT shall not be liable for any compensation with respect to candidates whose proposals have not been accepted. Nor shall it be liable in the event of its deciding not to award the proposal.

EAMT best thesis award

2018 EAMT Best Thesis Awardee

Seven PhD theses defended in 2018 were received as candidates for the 2018 edition of the Anthony C Clarke Award – EAMT Best Thesis Award, and all seven were eligible. A panel of 29 reviewers was recruited to examine and score the theses, considering how challenging the problem tackled in each thesis was, how relevant the results are for machine translation as a field, and what the strength of its impact in terms of scientific publications was. Two EAMT Executive Committee members (Mikel L. Forcada and Lucia Specia) have also reviewed the theses and provided an additional review.

The year of 2018 was again a very good year for PhD theses in machine translation. The scores of all theses were very high, although one thesis was scored considerably higher than the others. A panel of two EAMT Executive Committee members (Mikel L. Forcada and Carolina Scarton) verified that all reviews were consistent and that we had a clear winner.

The panel has then decided to grant the 2018 edition of the EAMT Best Thesis Award to Longyue Wang’s thesis “Discourse-Aware Neural Machine Translation” (Dublin City University – now at Tencent AI Lab), supervised by Andy Way and Qun Liu (now at Huawei Noah’s Ark Lab).

The awardee will receive a prize of €500, together with a suitably-inscribed certificate. In addition, Dr. Wang has been invited to present a summary of his thesis at the 17th Machine Translation Summit (MT Summit 2019: https://www.mtsummit2019.com) which will take place in Dublin (Ireland), August 19-23, 2019. In order to facilitate this, the EAMT will waive the winner’s registration costs, and will make available a travel bursary of €200.

Mikel L. Forcada

EAMT President

Carolina Scarton

EAMT Secretary

past event

EAMT supports TeTra5: Technologies for Translation (Forlí, Italy, 14–15 March 2019)

EAMT is one of the organizations supporting the fifth edition of the “Technologies for Translation” (TeTra) international conference, organized and hosted by the University of Bologna on the Forlì campus, in Italy, on 14-15 March 2019. This year’s edition of this biennial event has the thought-provoking title “Is translation dead? Machine translation, post-editing and the challenges that lie ahead”, and will focus on the technology that has gained more ground than any others in the world of language services: machine translation and its associated activities, such as post-editing and revision. Key questions such as the following will be addressed during the two days of the conference: How and how much have modern machine translation systems improved? How can (or should) these systems be exploited, and which skills are most valuable to be successful in today’s translation marketplace? And above all: is it so plausible that artificial intelligence will replace human intelligence in the near future?

Talks on these stimulating topics will be given by high-profile international invited speakers who have close ties with the translation and language services industry, including Jost Zetzsche (International Writers’ Group), Lieve Macken (Ghent University), Sharon O’Brien (Dublin City University), Maarit Koponen (University of Turku), Bert Wylin (KU Leuven), Giovanna Scocchera (University of Bologna), Antonio Toral (University of Groningen), and Federico Gaspari (University for Foreigners “Dante Alighieri” of Reggio Calabria and Dublin City University). The second day of the conference will offer practical hands-on workshops concerning the use of machine translation and translation technologies as productivity tools for translators and interpreters; these workshops will be run by Luisa Bentivogli (Fondazione Bruno Kessler), Claudia Lecci (University of Bologna), and Nicoletta Spinolo (University of Bologna). In addition, following on from the success of past TeTra conferences, a “lunch and demo” session will feature software demonstrations and provide valuable networking opportunities with like-minded colleagues in the translation business; software products demonstrated during this session will include MateCat, MemoQ, SDL Trados Studio, Raw Output Evaluator/IntelliWebSearch, and TranslationQ. A final round table will encourage interaction between the conference organizers, the invited speakers and the audience.

Around 150 delegates from Italy and beyond are expected to attend the conference, consisting of an exciting mix of forward-looking and innovation-oriented in-house and freelance translators and interpreters, managers of translation/interpretation companies, localisers, technical writers and editors, project managers, linguists, academics, lecturers, researchers, trainers and students in translation and interpreting. In addition to EAMT’s support, the conference is organized in collaboration with leading professional associations of translators and interpreters in Italy, namely AIIC, AITI, ANITI, ASSOINTERPRETI and TradInFo.

Further information is available from the official conference website ( https://events.unibo.it/tetra-technologies-for-translation ) and Facebook page (www.facebook.com/events/2175866905998036/ ).

Sponsorship of activities

EAMT Sponsorship of Activities

Call for Proposals

The European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT) is an organization that serves the growing community of people interested in MT and translation tools, including users, developers, and researchers of this increasingly viable technology.

As part of its commitment to promote research, development and awareness about translation technologies, the EAMT is for the fourth consecutive year launching a call for proposals to fund MT-related activities during 2019. .

Purpose of the Call

The EAMT is planning to support various MT activities such as tutorials, workshops, teaching and awareness initiatives, open­-source initiatives, and small research and development projects by its current members.

The proposed activity should be of direct interest to the MT community: researchers, developers, vendors or users of MT technologies.

The EAMT particularly encourages proposals from young members.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  1. Recent developments in MT research.
  2. MT evaluation methodology, metrics and results.
  3. Launch of MT­-specific evaluation campaigns.
  4. New or prospective commercial users of MT technology.
  5. MT environments (workflow, support tools, etc.).
  6. Interaction between users and MT systems.
  7. MT combined with other technologies (translation memories, speech translation, cross-language information retrieval, multilingual text categorization, multilingual text summarization, etc.).
  8. MT for less-­resourced languages: development, usage, etc.
  9. MT in the social internet: new uses, new modes of development.
  10. Training events on MT, particularly on recent developments.
  11. Events to disseminate MT, especially to the wider public.

All proposals will be screened by a review committee that consists of EAMT Executive Committee members and possibly a few appointed external experts if necessary.

Submission information

Eligibility requirements

In order to qualify for funding, the institution(s) or the individual making the proposal must be a confirmed member of the EAMT at submission time.

Membership information: http://www.eamt.org/membership.php

Selection criteria

  1. The proposed activity should be of direct interest to the MT community at large: researchers, developers, vendors or users of MT technologies.
  2. The proposal shall clearly describe the purpose of the project and include measurable mid-project milestones for which a report should be submitted (see below).
  3. Preference will be given to projects which by nature will involve and be beneficial for several persons, as for instance conferences, seminars, workshops and tutorials.
  4. Proposals with a significant, clearly identified impact on the MT community (through the development, dissemination or use of project results) are those most likely to be accepted.
  5. Proposals that bring together different aspects of MT will be specially valued.
  6. The proposal should be clearly justified as being technically and/or scientifically sound.
  7. The quality and efficiency of the implementation of the proposal will be evaluated.
  8. The budget should be adequate for the proposed objectives and the actual implementation of the activity.

Budget

EAMT anticipates funding several proposals for various activities. There are two categories of proposals. The member institutions’ category and the individual members’ category.

The total foreseen EAMT Budget for this call is around €10,000 to cover all granted projects (tutorials, workshops, teaching and awareness initiatives, open-source initiatives, and research and development projects). The maximum amount EAMT can grant for a single project will be €10,000.

A project being granted financial support by EAMT according to this call will receive 50% of the granted amount at the start of the project. The proposer will receive the remaining 50% when the mid-project progress report has been received by the EAMT Secretary and substantiates that the mid-project milestones are met, and furthermore provided that the proposer is still a current member of the EAMT.

Contact for enquiries

For general enquiries please contact:

Carolina Scarton
EAMT Secretary
e-mail: c.scarton@sheffield.ac.uk

Submission procedure

Overview

Candidates should respond to the call by submitting a single PDF document, written in English, that is composed of the following elements:

  1. Proposal summary: 1­-page maximum
  2. Detailed proposal description: 5-­page maximum
  3. Budget and project planning overview: 1­-page maximum

Submit your proposals as a single PDF file no later than the deadline (see Important Dates below) through EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=eamt2019 (Submission type: Proposals for Activities)

Detailed description of sections of the proposal

  1. Proposal summary (one page) in English.
    1. Complete contact information of candidate.
    2. Description of the activity or the event.
    3. Budget summary and identification of the requested support from EAMT.
  2. Experience of the proposing person/organization in the field.
  3. Detailed proposal description (up to 5 pages)
    1. A statement on why this event or activity would be helpful for the community./li>
    2. A statement justifying why EAMT should support this event or activity.
    3. A list of experience and related skills of the participants of the team.
  4. Budget and project planning overview (up to 1 page)
    1. A breakdown of the costs estimated for the entire activity or event.
    2. Clear milestones and deliverables must be indicated.
    3. An identification of the support requested from EAMT and possible other supporting funds.

Important Dates

  1. Circulation of the Call: August 30, 2018
  2. Submission deadline for proposals: October 15, 2018, 23:59 CEST
  3. Acceptance notifications and negotiations to start on: December 10, 2018

In case of acceptance (projects):

  1. Mid-project progress report due: June 30, 2019, 23:59 CEST
  2. Final report and deliverables due: January 31, 2020, 23:59 CET

Additional provisions

  1. Only complete proposals will be reviewed.
  2. All information submitted with proposals will be regarded as confidential and will only be used in the context of this project.
  3. The funded projects may be required to report at the EAMT events (e.g. Poster at the EAMT conference, a short progress report for the General assembly, etc.), without any claim for additional funds.
  4. The EAMT should be acknowledged in all materials related to the project, activity or initiative.

No obligation to award the proposal

The EAMT shall be under no obligation to fund the proposals pursuant to this call for proposals. EAMT shall not be liable for any compensation with respect to candidates whose proposals have not been accepted. Nor shall it be liable in the event of its deciding not to award the proposal.