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Dear Colleagues,

The 4th Language and Technology Conference (LTC'09), a meeting organized by the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science of Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland in cooperation with the Adam Mickiewicz University Foundation (co-organizer), will take place on November 6-8, 2009.

Human Language Technologies (HLT) continue to be a challenge for computer science, linguistics and related fields as these areas become an ever more essential element of our everyday technological environment. Since the very beginning of the Computer and Information Age these fields have influenced and stimulated each other. The European Union strongly supports HLT under the 7th Framework Program. These efforts as well as technological, social and cultural globalization have created a favorable climate for the intensive exchange of novel ideas, concepts and solutions across initially distant disciplines. We aim at further contributing to this exchange and invite you to join us at LTC in November 6-8, 2009 as well as at the satellite FlaReNet workshop (November 6) co-located with the LTC'09.

This event is listed at the Computer Science Event List, www.informatics-europe.org

Zygmunt Vetulani
LTC'09 Chair
vetulani@amu.edu.pl

The conference topics include the following (the ordering is not significative):

• electronic language resources and tools
• formalisation of natural languages
• parsing and other forms of NL processing
• computer modelling of language competence
• NL user modelling
• NL understanding by computers
• knowledge representation
• man-machine NL interfaces
• Logic Programming in Natural Language Processing
• speech processing
• NL applications in robotics
• text-based information retrieval and extraction
• question answering
• tools and methodologies for developing multilingual systems
• translation enhancement tools
• corpora-based methods in language engineering
• WordNet-like ontologies
• methodological issues in HLT
• language-specific computational challenges for HLTs (especially for languages other than English)
• HLT standards
• HLTs as a support for foreign language teaching
• communicative intelligence
• legal issues connected with HLTs (problems and challenges)
• contribution of HLTs to the Homeland Security problems (technology applications and legal aspects)
• visionary papers in the field of HLT
• HLT related policies
• system prototype presentations

This list is by no means closed and we are open to further proposals. Please do not hesitate to contact us in order to feed us with you suggestions and ideas of how to satisfy your expectation concerning the program. The Program Committee is also open to suggestions concerning accompanying events (workshops, exhibits, panels, etc). Suggestions, ideas and observations may be addressed directly to the LTC Chair by email (vetulani@amu.edu.pl).

The conference language is English.

Closed.

Final papers are due by October 12, 2009. We strongly recommend using the templates for MS Word. In any case, please do observe the following:

1. Accepted fonts for English text are Time Roman, Times New Roman and Courier (recommended for program listings); character size for the main text should be 10 points, with 11 points leading (line spacing).
2. The only allowed paper format is A4. Text should be presented in 2 columns, 8,20 cm each with 0,80 cm between columns (gutter). Please note: we have slightly changed column parameters.
3. The document size is 5 pages formatted according to (1) and (2) above. Only one additional page is allowed. In that case an extra page fee of 10 EURO must be paid by on of the authors regostered to the conference. If your paper is longer than 5 pages, please notify us by sending an e-mail to ltc@amu.edu.pl.
4. The only accepted document type is PDF.
5. Do not use color images (nor any other color elements) in your paper. Convert all color elements into grayscale. Note that your paper will be printed in grayscale.
6. Please, embed fonts (e.g. Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean,...) with your PDF. Use the appriopiate option in your PDF-generator.

Final papers should be sent by e-mail to ltc@amu.edu.pl as an attachment. A security copy should be sent to vetulani@amu.edu.pl.

• The attached file should be named ltc-PAPERID-FirstAuthorName.pdf   e.g. ltc-005-vetulani.pdf (the paper #5 with Vetulani as the submitting author).
• As the subject of your e-mail use: LTC FINAL PAPER  PAPERID   e.g. LTC FINAL PAPER 005.

The PAPERID is your paper ID from EasyChair.

Acceptance will be based on the reviewers' assessments (anonymous submission model). The accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings (hard copy, with ISBN number) and on CD-ROM. The abstracts of the accepted contributions will also be made available via the conference page (during its lifetime). Publication requires full electronic registration and payment of the conference fee (full registration) by at least one of the co-authors by October 12, 2009. (In case of more than one accepted paper a special regulation will be applied. This regulation will be announced later on.)

A post-conference volume with extended versions of selected papers will be published. It is planed to publish them in the Springer series Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (final approval pending).

The LTC 2005 post conference selection appeared in form of Special Issue of Archives of Control Sciences (2005, Volume 15 nb. 3 and Volume 15 nb. 4)

The LTC 2007 post-conference volume (revised, extended papers) has just appeared in the Springer Verlag series LNAI (vol. 5603).

• Deadline for submission of papers for review: September 6, 2009
• Acceptance/Rejection notification: September 27, 2009 (at latest*)
• Deadline for submission of final versions of accepted papers: October 12, 2009
• LRL Workshop: November 6, 2009
• Conference: November 6-8, 2009

Only electronic registration is possible.

Non-student participants:

• Regular registration (payment by October 12, 2009) 160 EURO
• Late registration (payment after October 12, 2009) 190 EURO

• Regular registration (payment by October 12, 2009) 100 EURO
• Late registration (payment after October 12, 2009) 120 EURO

Student registrations must be accompanied by a proof of full-time student status valid on the payment date. Registrants are requested to scan and e-mail their proof of student status to ltc@amu.edu.pl. The e-mail subject field must have the following format:

LTC-09-StudentStatus-< Name_of_participant > (e.g. LTC-09-StudentStatus-VETULANI)

The conference fee covers:

• Participation in the scientific programme
• Conference materials
• Proceedings on CD and paper
• Social events (banquet,...)
• Coffee breaks

1. Download the form: [credit card form DOC] or [credit card form PDF]
2. Print the form
3. Complete the form
4. Sign the form
5. Send the signed form by fax to: +48 61 8279701 (Fundacja Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu)

Name: Getting Less-Resourced Languages on-Board!

(New) Date: 6.11.2009, half-day (afternoon) + banquet

Theme: Language Technologies (LT) provide an essential support to the challenge of Multilingualism. In order to develop them, it is necessary to have access to Language Resources (LR) and to assess LT performances. To this regard, the situation is very different across the different languages. Little or sparse data exist for languages in countries or regions where limited efforts have been devoted to such issues in the past, also known as Less-Resourced Languages (LRL). The workshop aims at reporting the needs, at presenting achievements and at proposing solutions for the future, both in terms of LR and of LT evaluation, especially in the European, Euro-Mediterranean and regional frameworks. This will allow to identity the factors that have an impact on a potential and shared roadmap towards supplying LR and LT for all languages.

Topics:

• Experience in the production, validation and distribution of LR for less-resourced languages
• Experience in the evaluation of LT for less-resourced languages
• Infrastructures for making available LR and LT in less-resourced languages
• Alternative approaches (comparable corpora, pivot languages, language clustering…)
• To be completed...

Co-Chairs: Joseph Mariani (LIMSI-CNRS & IMMI-CNRS), Khalid Choukri(ELRA & ELDA), Zygmunt Vetulani (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan)

LRL Workshop Program Committee :

Paper submission deadline: September 6.

Sponsors: FLaReNet, ELRA

Inscriptions: as for the general LTC (+ cc to workshop chairs)

Fees: free for LTC registered participants; 80 Euros for the Workshop-only attenders

Paper submission: as for the general LTC (EasyChair) + to the workshop chairs

Presentation: publication in the LTC proceedings (paper + CD)

Reviewing: up to the workshop chairs + Program Committee

Program: The workshop will comprise presentations (including keynote talks) and a panel session, including a EC representative (tentative). In addition, selected speakers will be invited to present their papers to a larger audience at the main LTC conference.

Key issue: "How to make standards attractive = how to make attractive standards?"

Organisers: CLARIN, FLaReNet

Moderator: Steven Krauwer (CLARIN/ELSNET/UiL OTS)

Inved panelists : to be confirmed

Objectives: A precondition for standards to be attractive seems meeting real needs of the community of users. Identification of needs is therefore essential and improving methodologies which would permit doing it correctly is an important challenge. This is also an urgent task regarding the globalisation pressure and the risk of growing technological gap between the so called "Less-resourced languages" and technologically leading ones. The panel is intended to be a contribution to face this challenge.

Planned date: 7.11.2009, afternoon

Objectives:The aim of the ITPS Special Track is an overview of the results obtain within three years research-and-development projects of PPBW, as well as confrontation of the results obtain so far with the initial expectations and the newly manifested needs. This Special Track aims at detection of new application areas of Language Technologies in the field of Public Security.

Key words: Homeland security, Human language technologies, Systems with natural language competence, Language engineering resources for the security domain, Speech and text processing, Multilingual aspects, Legal aspects of human language technologies of security domain

Organisers: PPBW - Polish Platform for Homeland Security

Chairs: Dr. Zbigniew Rau (PPBW), Prof. dr. Emil W. Pływaczewski (Univ. Białystok)

Secretary: Rashel Talukder(PPBW)

Contributors : invited representatives of the PPBW projects and external presenters

Participants : the ITPS is an integral part of the LTC and is open to all LTC participants

Submissions : the external presenters are supposed to follow the same procedure as for the LTC, additionally, they are requested to send a security copy to Rashel Talukder and Zygmunt Vetulani by September 6 (with "LTC-ITPS Workshop" in the "subject" field); in particular, both invited and external presenters should submit papers using the EasyChair system (accessible via www.ltc.amu.edu.pl)

Publications : as for LTC

Planned date: 6.11.2009, afternoon

Planned: individual presentations and a panel discussion (details available soon)

Joint LTC-FLaReNet Satellite Workshop (LRL 2009) : Getting Less-Ressourced Languages on Board!

CLARIN-FLaReNet LTC Panel Debate: "How to make standards attractive = how to make attractive standards?"

Special Track on Information Technologies in application to the Public Security Research

Hyde Park Corner We will arrange "A Hyde Park style Speakers' Corner" for non-reviewed presentations and positions. A limited number of presentations (depending on the available space) will be accepted. The content must meet the conference scope and aims. Both form and content must conform to Polish and International Law. Texts will be presented on the sole responsibility of the authors/presenters and will not be published or reproduced in the Conference documents.

Book exhibition (call for exhibitors in preparation). Authors are invited to bring hard copies of their papers and books. We plan to make special presentations of the achievements of the conference participants, irrespective of whether they are directly related to the conference topic.

Other special events. Besides the standard conference presentation of papers, the Organizers are open to various kinds of initiatives (expos, demos, satellite workshops, panels, awards). A program of special events is now under construction. You are welcome to contact us with your suggestions.

The 4th Language & Technology Conference will be held in the Poznań International Fair Conference Center (Głogowska 14), pavilion 14B (see the International Fair map).

Conference guest traveling by car may park them in the grounds of Poznań International Fair. To obtain a special PARKING PASS LTC'09', please send an e-mail to ltc@amu.edu.pl, giving "PARKING PASS LTC09" as the title. All cars have to use the Western Entrance in Śniadeckich street (see the International Fair map).

As at the 2nd and 3rd Language and Technology Conferences (2005, 2007) special awards will be granted to the best student papers. Regular or PhD students (on the date of paper submission) are eligible.

In 2005 the Jury, composed of the Program Committee members present at the conference, awarded this distinction to: Ronny Melz (University of Leipzig), Hartwig Holzapfel (University of Karlsruhe), Marcin Woliński (IPI PAN, Warsaw).

In 2007 this distinction went to Daria Fišer (University of Ljubljana)

Participants from some non-EU countries may need visas to enter Poland. Visa delivery is exclusively in competence of the appropriate Visa Authorities (of Poland or other Schengen countries). If you have any doubts, we recommend you to check your situation with the nearest Polish Consulate in your country of residence. If necessary, we can confirm that we have accepted your paper for presentation at the conference and that you are expected to present your paper personally. Upon request, we may also write a confirmation letter (in Polish) directly to the Polish Consulate indicated by you. To do this we will need a request letter (e-mail) from you in which you will provide us with the address of the Consulate you wish us to contact.

To get information about countries whose citizens are not required to have a visa when entering Poland and to find important telephone numbers you may also visit the web site of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs http://www.msz.gov.pl/index.php?document=2 (see Consular Information http://www.msz.gov.pl/Consular,Information,2345.html).

This site is in progress. Further important practical information will be published shortly. Please consult this site again from time to time.

There are several large scale events in Poznań at the LTC 2009 time (November 6-8, 2009). Therefore, we strongly recommend you to make the hotel reservation in advance. There are several standard possibilities to book via Internet. Also, a special offer for Conference participants has been prepared by the travel agency Zimny http://www.zimny.pl (mailto:zimny@zimny.pl).

• The official web site of the city of Poznań
• Poznań on-line bulletin for foreigners
• Poznań Local Tourist Organisation
• Theatres
  • Teatr Wielki im. Stanisława Moniuszki
  • The Polish Theatre in Poznań
  • The Nowy Theatre in Poznań
  • Animation Theatre in Poznań
  • The Polish Dance Theatre
  • The Zone of Silence Theatre
• Cinemas
  • Multikino
  • Kinepolis
• Museums
  • Poznań Archaeological Museum
  • Muzeum Narodowe w Poznaniu
  • The Museum of Musical Instruments

Even though we did our best to make sure all conference locations are within walking distance, conference guests may wish to use the public transport. Fortunately, Poznań boasts a vast public transport network.

The timetable (by tram or bus line) can be viewed at http://www.mpk.poznan.pl/rozklad-jazdy. (After choosing the line, one has to choose the proper bus or tram stop in the right direction.)

An interactive transportation map is available at http://www.info.poznan.pl/Map/MapControl.html?Id=0. (You type the street name in the text box to see the chosen part of town and display bus and tram lines by selecting A for buses and T for trams from the left upper corner menu.)

A 10-minute adult ticket costs PLN 2.00, A 30-minute ticket costs PLN 3.60 and a 60-minute ticket is PLN 5.80. They are valid in both trams and buses. You have to validate the ticket in a special machine inside the vehicle. Within the time frame you can change lines. Normal tickets are valid also for the night buses and trams.

You can buy tickets in one of the newspaper stands near bus stops.

Electronic tickets Electronic tickets allowing conference participants to enter the Poznań International Fair area will be available in the Entrance Hall (Hol Wschodni). The tickets are valid for the three days of the conference. Conference participants should carry the tickets with them at all times. It is not possible to enter the Fair area without the ticket.

Wi-Fi Free wireless Internet is available in pavilion 14B (where the conference takes place). Please choose the MPT network (unprotected).

Taxi You can call a taxi free from the reception desk.

Restaurants The following restaurants are in near proximity of pavilion 14B (where the conference takes place):

• the pavilion 14B restaurant (entrance by the reception desk)
• a Greek restaurant (Głogowska Street)
• an Asian restaurant (Śniadeckich Street)
• a McDonald’s (Głogowska Street)

Tram trip On November 7 (Saturday) at 16:55 we meet by the reception desk to go on a guided tram tour around Poznań. Two historical trams will take conference participants from Dworzec Zachodni (Western Train Station) to Wrocławska Street. From there we will take a short walk to the City Hall, where we will meet the President of Poznań. The trams will leave from the stop by Dworzec Zachodni at 17:20. Because we will use the public tram network, it is impossible to leave with any delay!

The currency of Poland is Polish złoty (PLN). Złoty is subdivided into 100 groszy (singular: grosz). As for September 26, 2007, the euro/złoty exchange rate is 4,29, the dollar/złoty exchange rate is 2,91.

If you are arriving by plane, you can get to the city centre by bus or by taxi. Four bus lines run from the Poznań-Ławica Airport to the city centre: 48, 59, L (express line) and 242 (night bus line) (see information on public transport). Bus 59 departs from the airport grounds and bus 48 departs from Wyszeborska street (200m straight from terminal building). The bus needs approximately 20 minutes to reach the city centre. Poznań International Fair building complex is located near the "Bałtyk" stop. The taxi rank is located in front of the airport's arrival hall. You may also call a taxi (in Polish or English) by dialing the number 19622 (no prefixes). Depending on the traffic, you will pay PLN 25-40 to get to the city centre.