Important dates
* Submission of proposals for panels, workshops and tutorials: 14 October 2005
* Submission of proposals for oral and poster papers, referenced demos: 14 October 2005
* Notification of acceptance of panels, workshops and tutorials proposals: 7 November 2005
* Notification of acceptance of oral papers, posters, referenced demos: 16 January 2006
* Final versions for the proceedings: 20 February 2006
* Conference: 24-26 May 2006
* Pre-conference workshops and tutorials: 22 and 23 May 2006
* Post-conference workshops and tutorials: 27 and 28 May 2006
Internet connections and various computer platforms and facilities will be available at the conference site. In addition to referenced demos concerning LRs and related tools, it will be possible to run unreferenced demos of language engineering products, systems and tools. Those interested should contact the organiser of the demonstrations (details will be posted on http://www.lrec-conf.org).
In the Information Society, the pervasive character of Human Language Technologies (HLT) and their relevance to practically all fields of Information Society Technologies (IST) has been widely recognised. Two issues are considered particularly relevant: the availability of Language Resources (LRs) and the methods for the evaluation of resources, technologies, products and applications. Substantial mutual benefits are achieved by addressing these issues through international cooperation. The term language resources refers to sets of language data and descriptions in machine readable form, such as written or spoken corpora and lexica, annotated or not, multimodal resources, grammars, terminology or domain specific databases and dictionaries, ontologies, multimedia databases, etc. LRs also cover basic software tools for their acquisition, preparation, collection, management, customisation and use. LRs are used in many types of components/systems/applications, such as software localisation and language services, language enabled information and communication services, knowledge management, e-commerce, e-publishing, e-learning, e-government, cultural heritage, linguistic studies, etc.. This large range of usages makes the LRs infrastructure a strategic part of the e-society, where the creation of a basic set of LRs for all languages must be ensured in order to bring all languages to the same level of usability and availability. The relevance of the evaluation for language technologies development is increasingly recognised. This involves assessing the state-of-the-art for a given technology, measuring the progress achieved within a programme, comparing different approaches to a given problem, assessing the availability of technologies for a given application, product benchmarking, and assessing system usability and user satisfaction. The aim of the LREC conference is to provide an overview of the state-of-the-art, explore new R&D directions and emerging trends, exchange information regarding LRs and their applications, evaluation methodologies and tools, ongoing and planned activities, industrial uses and needs, requirements coming from the new e-society, both with respect to policy issues and to technological and organisational ones. LREC provides a unique forum for researchers, industrials and funding agencies from across a wide spectrum of areas to discuss problems and opportunities, find new synergies and promote initiatives for international cooperation in the areas mentioned above, in support to investigations in language sciences, progress in language technologies and development of corresponding products, services and applications.
