EAMT best thesis award

The Anthony C. Clarke Award for the 2024 EAMT Best Thesis

  • November 28, 2024 (updated on November 28, 2024)

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 translators, users, developers, and researchers of this increasingly viable technology.

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

Previous year winners can be found at https://eamt.org/best-thesis-award/.

Eligibility

Researchers who

  • have completed a PhD (or equivalent) thesis on a relevant topic in a European, African or Middle Eastern[1] institution within calendar year 2024,
  • have not previously won another international award for that thesis, and,
  • are members of the EAMT at the time of submission,

are invited to submit their theses to the EAMT for consideration.

[1] Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates, Yemen.

Panel

The submissions will be judged by a panel of experts who will be specifically appointed, 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 does not need to 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, and professionals outside of the language industry)
  • 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 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
  • multilingual language technologies, including with large language models

Prize

The winner will be announced in March 2025 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 MT Summit 2025 to be held from 23th to 27th June 2025 in Geneva, Switzerland (https://mtsummit2025.unige.ch). 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 2026.

Submission

Candidates will submit, using EasyChair

(https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=eamt2025bta), a single PDF file containing:

  • a 2-page summary of your thesis in English, containing:
    • your full contact details,
    • the name and contact details of your supervisor(s),
    • the main aspects of your work, namely goal/objectives, methodology and results.
  • 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 2024 EAMT Best Thesis” and
  • acknowledge the right of the EAMT to publicize the granting of the award.

For this year’s Best Thesis Award we are requiring candidates to be an individual EAMT member at the time of submission. For EAMT memberships, please visit: https://eamt.org/101-2/.

Closing date

  • Submission deadline: January 31, 2025, 23:59 CET.
  • Award notification: March 2025.

Latest

EAMT Sponsorship of Activities – Students’ edition – 2024

  • October 21, 2024 (updated on November 17, 2024)

Call for Proposals 

The European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT) is an organisation 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 fifth consecutive year launching a call for proposals to fund MT-related activities led by students during 2025.

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. 

This call will also give priority to projects that extend work done during the Machine Translation Marathon 2024 (https://ufal.mff.cuni.cz/mtm24/), held in Prague, Czech Republic, from 2 to 7 September 2024. 

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 (Membership information: http://www.eamt.org/membership.php). Applicants will also need formal approval from their supervisor.

It is important to emphasise that projects are expected to be student-led. Therefore, although we welcome projects showing collaboration with industry and other academic partners, the project is expected to directly benefit the students own career and/or project. 

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

Sara Szoc

EAMT Secretary

e-mail: saraszoc@gmail.com

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 (including references)
  2. Person/organisation 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=eamt2025projectproposal (Project category: Students). Authors should use the template available at https://eamt.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/eamt2024-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 the 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.
    5. References.
  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: October 21, 2024
  • Submission deadline for proposals: November 18, 2024, 23:59 CEST November 25, 2024, 23:59 CEST
  • Acceptance notifications and negotiations to start on: December 16, 2024 December 23, 2024

In case of acceptance:

  • Mid-project progress report due: June 30, 2025, 23:59 CEST
  • Final report and deliverables due: January 31, 2026, 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 it deciding not to award the proposal.

Latest

EAMT Sponsorship of Activities – 2024

  • October 21, 2024 (updated on November 17, 2024)

Call for Proposals 

The European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT) is an organisation 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 twelfth consecutive year launching a call for proposals to fund MT-related activities during 2025.

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.

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

Sara Szoc

EAMT Secretary

e-mail: saraszoc@gmail.com

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 (including references)
  2. Person/organisation 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=eamt2025projectproposal (Project category: General). Authors should use the template available at https://eamt.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/eamt2024-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 the 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.
    5. References.
  2. Experience of the proposing person/organisation 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: October 21, 2024
  • Submission deadline for proposals: November 18, 2024, 23:59 CEST November 25, 2024, 23:59 CEST
  • Acceptance notifications and negotiations to start on: December 16, 2024 December 23, 2024

In case of acceptance:

  • Mid-project progress report due: June 30, 2025, 23:59 CEST
  • Final report and deliverables due: January 31, 2026, 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 it deciding not to award the proposal.

EAMT conference

EAMT 2026: CALL FOR BIDS

  • August 9, 2024 (updated on September 22, 2024)

The European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT) invites expressions of interest to host the EAMT 2026 conference, to be held in Europe, the Middle East or Africa (EMEA) between May-June 2026. This will be the 26th EAMT conference. 

At this stage, we are seeking draft proposals from prospective bidders. These will be evaluated and promising bidders will be asked to provide additional information for the final selection. The EAMT president will act as general chair and will work together with local organisers to design and shape the conference, including the appointment of chairs.

Draft proposals (due September 13th, 2024) should include information on all of the following items:

1. Proposed dates: between May – June 2026 (3 days main conference + 1 day for workshops and tutorials)

2. Location: city and conference venue. Indicate whether the conference would be held at a university, hotel or convention centre. Bear in mind that EAMT is growing: Ghent (EAMT 2022) had around 120 registered participants, Tampere (EAMT 2023) and Sheffield (EAMT 2024) had around 190 registered participants. So please suggest a location that could host 200+ people for the main conference sessions, plus room for registration, a large poster or exhibit room, and at least 4 conference rooms for hosting parallel workshops and tutorials on the last day (about 100 people each).

3. Local arrangements team: local chair/co-chairs, committee (identifying a coordinator to be co-opted as EAMT executive committee member), volunteer labour (e.g. students), registration handling. The local arrangements team will be responsible for activities such as arranging meeting rooms, equipment, refreshments, accommodation, on-site registration, participant internet access, the welcome reception, the conference dinner, and working with the other chairs and the EAMT Board to develop the budget and registration materials. Indicate whether any national/regional computational linguistics or translation studies association would be on the board of the local organisation

4. Computing/wifi/audiovisual: whether there will be desktops/laptops in conference rooms and high-speed wireless Internet access, what the audiovisual facilities are, etc. There should be sufficient sound and microphones that can go around the room for Q&A.

5. Food catering including breaks (two coffee breaks and one lunch break for all days of the conference), reception and conference dinner

6. Social events, including infrastructure for banquet/other social events and welcome reception

7. Potential for sponsorships: local organisers partner with the EAMT EC to engage sponsors and align track chairs and keynotes. Bids should include strategies for outreach, anticipated sponsor tiers, and potential benefits for sponsors.

8. Co-location with other meetings and events: demonstrate that you have researched the dates to avoid clashes with other events and considered opportunities for co-location with other meetings

9. Cost estimates: while a finalised budget is not expected at this stage, it is essential that proposers provide well-researched estimates with some level of detail related to all of the above items. These estimates should be documented in the expenses spreadsheet (template provided by the EAMT upon request).

Proposals will be evaluated with respect to a number of criteria (unordered):

● Adequacy of conference and exhibit facilities for the anticipated number of registrants

● Adequacy of accommodations and food services (in a range of price categories) and proximity to the conference facilities

● Adequacy of expense projections and expected surplus

● Appropriateness of proposed dates

● Geographical and national balance with regard to previous EACL and ACL conferences, and other major natural-language processing and translation studies conferences held in EMEA

● Co-location with national/regional conferences

● Experience of the local arrangements team

● Local machine translation and translation studies community support

● Local government and industry support

● Appropriateness of expected registration fees

● Accessibility of proposed site via public transportation

● Alignment with the EAMT ethics statement and policies: https://eamt.org/ethics/

Please send your expressions of interest electronically to the EAMT president:

Helena Moniz <<helena.moniz “at” campus.ul.pt>>

The EAMT board encourages groups who intend to submit a proposal to ask questions about how to prepare the proposal.

Important Dates:

  • September 13th, 2024 > October 14th, 2024: Bids submission deadline
  • September 20th, 2024 > October 21st, 2024: Shortlist and feedback to bidders
  • September 27th, 2024 > October 28th, 2024: Final bids due
  • October 4th, 2024 > November 4th, 2024: Final bid chosen

EAMT best thesis award

2023 Anthony C Clarke Award for the EAMT Best Thesis: awardee announcement

  • April 17, 2024 (updated on July 24, 2024)

Nine PhD theses defended in 2023 were received as candidates for the 2022 edition of the EAMT Best Thesis Award, and all nine were eligible. 20 reviewers 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. It became very clear that 2023 was another very good year for PhD theses in machine translation. 

All theses had merit, all candidates had strong CVs and, therefore, it was very difficult to select a winner.

A panel of two EAMT Executive Committee members (Barry Haddow and Helena Moniz) was assembled to process the reviews and select a winner that was later ratified by the EAMT executive committee.

We are pleased to announce that the winner of the 2023 edition of the EAMT Best Thesis Award is Marco Gaido’s’ thesis “Direct Speech Translation Toward High-Quality, Inclusive, and Augmented Systems” (FBK, Italy), supervised by Dr Marco Turchi and Dr.  Matteo Negri.

In addition, the committee judged  that the following theses, were “highly commended”:

  • Jannis Vamvas: “Model-based Evaluation of Multilinguality” (University of Zurich, Switzerland), supervised by Rico Sennrich and Lena A. Jäger
  • Javier Iranzo-Sánchez: “Streaming Neural Speech Translation” ( UPV, Spain), supervised by Jorge Civera and Alfons Juan 

The awardee will receive a prize of €500, together with a suitably-inscribed certificate. In addition, Dr. Gaido will present a summary of their thesis at the 25th Annual Conference of the European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT 2024: https://eamt2024.sheffield.ac.uk/) which will take place from June 24th to 27th in Sheffield, UK.  In order to facilitate this, the EAMT will waive the winner’s registration costs, and will make available a travel bursary of €200.

Barry Haddow, chair, EAMT BTA award 2023

Helena Moniz, EAMT president

Program committee 

Daniel Beck,   Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology

Bram Vanroy,   KU Leuven

Philipp Koehn,  Johns Hopkins University

Danielle Saunders,  DeepL

Alexandra Birch,  University of Edinburgh

Felix Stahlberg,  Google

Bill Byrne,   Amazon

Sheila Castilho,  Dublin City University

John E. Ortega,     Northeastern University

Anna Currey,  Amazon

Rachel Bawden,  Inria

Xingyi Song,  University of Sheffield

Miquel Esplà-Gomis,  Universidad de Alicante

Marcello Federico,    Amazon

Antonio Toral, University of Groningen

Diptesh Kanojia,     University of Surrey

José G. C. de Souza,  Unbabel

Mikel L. Forcada,     Universidad de Alicante

Liane Guillou,     University of Edinburgh

Vera Cabarrão,  Unbabel

EAMT conference

EAMT 2024: Bursaries for Translators

  • March 28, 2024 (updated on March 28, 2024)

Call for Participation 

The European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT) is an organisation 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 opens a call for a small number of bursaries to support translators and Translation Studies’ students, in attending the 25th Annual Conference of the European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT 2024) conference will be held in Sheffield, United Kingdom, from June 24th to June 27th.

Purpose of the Call

This call is dedicated to support translators and Translation Studies’ students, working or studying in European, Middle-Eastern or African countries, that do not have fundings to attend the conference. 

The EAMT particularly encourages applications from early-career translators.

All applications will be screened by EAMT executive committee members.

Application information

Eligibility requirements

In order to qualify for this call, the individual must be a translator or enrolled in a Master or PhD course in Translation Studies. The support is only available to individuals working or studying in European, Middle-Eastern or African countries. Freelance translators and students will have priority. We will also give priority to people with accepted papers in the main conference.

Selection criteria

  • The selection will be made based on the information submitted to the provided Google Forms (link below).
  • One of the fields in the form is a “motivation letter”, where you should describe your motivation for attending the EAMT 2024 conference and explain why you do not have other funds to sponsor your attendance.
  • You should also submit a CV, highlighting your years of experience in the translation area and your experience working with MT.
  • For students: you should also submit an official proof of student status, signed by your University.

Bursaries

EAMT anticipates funding several applications. Selected participants will be announced on the 26th April 2024 and will receive complimentary membership in the EAMT for 2024 and 2025, free registration at the EAMT 2024 conference and paid accommodation in Sheffield.

Contact for enquiries

Sara Szoc

EAMT member

e-mail: saraszoc@gmail.com

Applications

Candidates should submit their applications via a Google Form: https://forms.gle/7JUDDhC7TDNXUEaq8

Important Dates

  • Circulation of the Call: March 28th, 2024
  • Submission deadline for applications: April 19th, 2024, 23:59 CEST
  • Notification: April 26th, 2024

Additional provisions

  • Only complete applications will be reviewed.
  • All information submitted with applications will be regarded as confidential and will only be used in the context of this call.
  • You may be asked to share the accommodation room with other awardees. However, we will commit to respect any requirements / concerns that you inform us (e.g. religion, gender, etc).
EAMT conference

EAMT 2024: Support for participants from  low-income countries and war zones

  • March 28, 2024 (updated on March 28, 2024)

Call for Participation 

The European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT) is an organisation 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 opens a call for a small number of bursaries to support EAMT 2024 attendees from areas affected by war and low-income countries. The 25th Annual Conference of the European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT 2024) conference will be held in Sheffield, United Kingdom, from June 24th to June 27th.

Purpose of the Call

This call is dedicated to support EAMT 2024 attendees that do not have fundings to attend the conference, from areas affected by war or low-income countries in Europe, Middle East or Africa. 

The EAMT particularly encourages applications from early career researchers.

All applications will be screened by EAMT executive committee members.

Application information

Eligibility requirements

In order to qualify for this call, the individual must be a student or an employee of an institution located in areas affected by war or in low-income countries in Europe, Middle East or Africa, that would not be able to attend the conference without this support. Students and early-career researchers/academics will have priority. We will also give priority to people with accepted papers in the main conference.

Selection criteria

  • The selection will be made based on the information submitted to the provided Google Forms (link below).
  • One of the fields in the form is a “motivation letter”, where you should describe your motivation for attending the EAMT 2024 conference and explain why you do not have other funds to sponsor your attendance.
  • You should also submit a CV, highlighting your years of experience in the MT area.

Bursaries

EAMT anticipates funding several applications. Selected participants will be announced on the 26th April 2024 and will receive complimentary membership in the EAMT for 2024 and 2025, free registration at the EAMT 2024 conference and paid accommodation in Sheffield.

Contact for enquiries

Sara Szoc

EAMT member

e-mail: saraszoc@gmail.com

Applications

Candidates should submit their applications via a Google Form: https://forms.gle/jS314WGUszZ2fMUT9

Important Dates

  • Circulation of the Call: March 28th, 2024
  • Submission deadline for applications: April 19th, 2024, 23:59 CEST
  • Notification: April 26th, 2024

Additional provisions

  • Only complete applications will be reviewed.
  • All information submitted with applications will be regarded as confidential and will only be used in the context of this call.
  • You may be asked to share the accommodation room with other awardees. However, we will commit to respect any requirements / concerns that you inform us (e.g. religion, gender, etc).

No obligation to award the bursaries

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

Latest

MT Summit 2025: CALL FOR EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST

  • June 30, 2023 (updated on June 30, 2023)

The European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT) invites expressions of interest to host the MT Summit 2025 conference, to be held in Europe, the Middle East or Africa (EMEA) between Summer and Autumn 2025. This will be the 20th Machine Translation Summit, which takes place bi-annually and its organisation and is overseen by the International Association for Machine Translation (IAMT), rotating between the sister organisations: EAMT, AMTA (Association for Machine Translation in the Americas) and AAMT (Asia-Pacific Association for Machine Translation). 

At this stage, we seek draft proposals from prospective bidders. These will be evaluated and promising bidders will be asked to provide additional information for the final selection. The EAMT president will act as general chair and will work together with local organisers to design and shape the conference, including the appointment of chairs.

Draft proposals (due August 20, 2023) should include information on all of the following items:
1. Proposed dates: between Spring and Autumn 2025
2. Location: city and conference venue. Indicate whether the conference would be held at a university, hotel or convention centre. Bear in mind that EAMT is growing and we expect the same will happen with MT Summit. While Ghent (EAMT 2022) had around 120 registered participants, Tampere (EAMT 2023) had around 190 registered participants. The last in person MT Summit (Dublin, 2019) had around 300 participants. So please suggest a location that could host 400+ people for the main conference sessions, plus at least 4 conference rooms hosting parallel workshops and tutorials (100 people each), a large poster or exhibit room; and room for registration
3. Local arrangements team: local chair/co-chair, committee (identifying a coordinator to be co-opted as EAMT executive committee member), volunteer labour (e.g. students), registration handling. The local arrangements team will be responsible for activities such as arranging meeting rooms, equipment, refreshments, accommodation, on-site registration, participant internet access, the reception, the conference dinner, and working with the other chairs and the EAMT Board to develop the budget and registration materials. Indicate whether any national/regional Computational Linguistics association would be on board of the local organisation
4. Computing/wifi/audiovisual: whether there will be desktop/laptop in conference rooms and high-speed wireless Internet access, what the audiovisual facilities are
5. Food catering including breaks, reception, poster sessions and conference dinner
6. Social events including infrastructure for banquet/other social event and reception
7. Potential for local sponsorships
8. Opportunities for co-location with other meetings
9. The costs related to all of the above items, which should be indicated in the expenses spreadsheet (template provided below).

Proposals will be evaluated with respect to a number of criteria (unordered):
● Adequacy of conference and exhibit facilities for the anticipated number of registrants
● Adequacy of accommodations and food services (in a range of price categories) and proximity to the conference facilities
● Adequacy of expenses projections and expected surplus
● Appropriateness of proposed dates
● Geographical and national balance with regard to previous EACL and ACL conferences, and other major Natural Language Processing conferences held in EMEA
● Co-location with national/regional conferences
● Experience of the local arrangements team
● Local CL community support
● Local government and industry support
● Appropriateness of expected registration fees
● Accessibility of proposed site

Please send your expressions of interest electronically to the EAMT president:

Helena Moniz: helena.monizcampus.ul.pt

The EAMT  board encourages groups who intend to submit a proposal to ask questions about how to prepare the proposal.

Important Dates:

  • August 11th, 2023: Deadline for bids
  • August 18th, 2023: Feedback to bidders and announcement of shortlist of bidders
  • August 25th, 2023: Final bids with implemented feedback
  • August 30th: Final bid chosen
  • September 4th-8th: MT Summit 2024 announcement (at MT Summit 2023)
Latest

Obituary: W. John Hutchins, librarian and historian of MT

  • May 13, 2021 (updated on January 14, 2022)

It is with deep sadness that I have just read that last January, 19, 2021, Dr. William John Hutchins passed away at the age of 81. 

John, a linguist and information scientist, was born in St. Pancras, London, on January 27, 1939. He graduated as a Bachelor of Arts in French and German at the University of Nottingham in 1960 and obtained a diploma in librarianship at University College London in 1962. 

He worked as assistant librarian at Durham University (1962–1965) and at the University of Sheffield (1965–1971), and then as assistant librarian (1971–1980) and sub-librarian (1980–1998) at the University of East Anglia.

In 2000 he obtained his PhD degree at the University of East Anglia. In addition to authoring numerous articles in journals and conferences about machine translation since 1963, he is particularly well known for the book An Introduction to Machine Translation (1992) which he co-authored with Harold Somers.

John’s service to the machine translation community, most of it after retirement, has been outstanding. After serving as editor of the UEA Papers in Linguistics, (1976–1982), he was editor of MT News International, the bulletin of the International Association for Machine Translation (1992–1997), president of the European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT, 1995–2004) and of the International Association for Machine Translation (IAMT, 1999–2001), and editor of the Compendium of Translation Software (1992–2012).

John leveraged his experience as a librarian and machine translation scholar to become the librarian and the historian of the field of machine translation. In the last few decades, he was the curator of one of the best resources about machine translation, the Machine Translation Archive. The service is temporarily offline but the IAMT is working hard to host it again as soon as possible and has commissioned the transformation and transfer of a large part of the information to the ACL Anthology, some of which is already available there.

The International Association for Machine Translation has recognized John’s dedication twice, first with the IAMT Award of Honour (2001) and with a unique Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013.

Harold (Harry) Somers, who was professor of Language Engineering at the University of Manchester and editor of the journal Machine Translation, says:

John was a truly great and important contributor to the field of machine translation, in his own unique way. I was fortunate enough to have him as a collaborator when we produced what was —I think— the first genuine text book for students of MT. I like to think that students found that book useful, even after the statistical MT revolution made a good number of the chapters fairly quickly out of date. What perhaps many did not realise is that John’s work on MT was entirely a labour of love, a kind of hobby, all completed in his own spare time: his job as a librarian did not include working on the MT Archive, nor I think did his employers properly realise and reward his fantastic contribution to the field. We were extremely fortunate to benefit from his skills: from a scientific viewpoint he was an informed observer free of any of the prejudices of the developer or researcher with his own theories and approaches to push. I have been away from the field for a good few years now, but working with John was certainly a highlight of my career, and I am sure his memory will be honoured far into the future.

Tony Clarke, treasurer of the EAMT for so many years, says:

I can only endorse all that has been already said about John and his academic achievements. I was always struck by his warmth and humility and his unassuming manner. Even though he was basically a fairly shy person, once you got talking to him, he could really open up and even surprise you with a joke or two. My wife, Susanne, used to talk to him about England and had some really interesting conversations.  I simply remember John as a warm-hearted and pleasant companion whom I am blessed and honoured to have known.  May he rest In peace.

Viggo Hansen, who has been part of EAMT for decades, as conference organizer, secretary, and recently as co-opted counsellor to the EAMT president adds:

I met John at the MT Summit in Luxembourg in 1995, when John was elected EAMT president. I am not a linguist but a user (at that time one of the few) using MT commercially. I had the pleasure to be the EAMT secretary during John’s nine years as EAMT President. When being with John you were in good company. He was an extremely interesting person and had a very broad range of interests. When we had talked enough about MT we could always relax in a good talk about football.

I met John in Exeter, in a workshop called MT 2000, which he had organized, and then many other times during these years. It was always a great pleasure to chat with such a nice, knowledgeable, and generous man. The last time I spent some time with John was at his home in Norwich, in 2017. He showed me how he planned to scan and catalogue shelves and shelves of historical machine translation publications and add them to the Archive. By the way, as my predecessor Andy Way points out, as a Norwich City FC season ticket holder, John would have been delighted to see the Canaries promoted again to the Premier League, after winning the Championship last Saturday.

I feel hugely indebted to John Hutchins, and I think many of you in the machine translation community do too. We will have to work together to preserve and continue his work on our behalf.

Sit ei terra levis.
Mikel L. Forcada
President of the European Association for Machine Translation
May 13, 2021