AfLaT 2013 (at GAPSYM 2013), Ghent - 6 December 2013

We are happy to announce that this year’s workshop dealing with African Language Technology (AfLaT) will take place on Friday 6 December 2013, at Ghent University. This year’s workshop, the fifth in the series, is conceived differently from the earlier ones, in that we wish to broaden our activities by reaching out to all colleagues who have lexical resources for the African languages, and already work with those resources, but have not yet necessarily made the move to using advanced computational routines to speed up the analysis or the building of tools. In other words, are you a corpus linguist working on the African languages, and would you like to know how computational linguistics could further your work, then this workshop is for you. Or, do you have African language data (corpora), and would you like to know about the state-of-the-art software tools to annotate and search those data, then this workshop is for you. Of course, if you are already into computational linguistics for the African languages, then you are most welcome to present your latest research results.

This year’s workshop, then, is conceived as a MasterClass, led by the founding members of AfLaT: Guy De Pauw (U Antwerp), Gilles-Maurice de Schryver (U Ghent), and Peter Wagacha (U Nairobi). We welcome all researches currently working with African-language corpus data, inviting them to present their current data sets and/or research during max. 20 minutes, to be followed by a discussion and advice from those present for 10 min. Working languages are English and French.

To participate we will need a title for your talk, and a brief abstract only, to be sent to the local organiser, G-M de Schryver (details below), no later than 15 November 2013.

PRACTICAL MATTERS of AfLaT 2013
As we CO-LOCATE with the GAP Symposium, we ask all participants to register online at: https://www.gap.ugent.be/registration. The REGISTRATION FEE is symbolic, at just 10 EUR for BA and MA students, 20 EUR for PhD students, 50 EUR for all others, and includes the conference folder, teas and coffees during the breaks, as well as a light lunch. (Those who wish to present their paper as a poster during the GAP lunch are also welcome to do so in addition.)

For tips on TRAVEL to the venue, please see: https://www.gap.ugent.be/GAPSYM7_entravel
For tips on ACCOMMODATION, please see: https://www.gap.ugent.be/gapsym7_enaccommodation
For all further information, either contact the AfLaT organiser, and/or see: https://www.gap.ugent.be/gapsym7_eninfo

MORE INFO on AfLaT
WEBSITE: https://aflat.org
WORKSHOP SERIES
o 1st, AfLaT 2009: Athens, Greece (@ EACL 2009)
o 2nd, AfLaT 2010: Valletta, Malta (@ LREC 2010)
o 3rd, AfLaT 2011: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (@ AGIS 2011)
o 4th, AfLaT 2012: Istanbul, Turkey (@ LREC 2012)
o 5th, AfLat 2013: Ghent, Belgium (@ GAPSYM 2013)
SPECIAL ISSUE of the journal Language Resources & Evaluation on AFRICAN LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY: https://aflat.org/content/language-resources-evaluation-special-issue-african-language-technology

We hope to receive your submissions soon!

Gilles-Maurice de Schryver
KongoKing Research Group
Department of Languages and Cultures
Ghent University
Rozier 44
B-9000 Ghent (Belgium)
E-mail: gillesmaurice [dot] deschryver [at] ugent [dot] be