ComputEL: A workshop to explore the use of computational methods in the study of endangered language; Baltimore, MD - June 2014

记录世界濒危语言的当代努力有赖于广泛使用的现代记录技术，特别是数字音频和视频记录设备以及对这种设备产生的记录进行注释的软件。然而，尽管十多年来致力于记录濒危语言的专门资金计划，支持参与这项工作的人的活动的技术版图仍然支离破碎，新技术的承诺在很大程度上仍然没有兑现。此外，总的来说，计算机科学家的工作大多与文献语言学家的日常工作脱节，使得每一组的知识很难相互交流。ComputEL研讨会将通过聚集现场语言学家和计算机科学家来探索如何创造计算技术和工具来更好地帮助分析濒危语言来解决这种情况。一个特别的重点将是如何促进这一领域的研究成果可以被开发成软件的过程，该软件得到了很好的支持，供记录该领域濒危语言的人使用。讲习班将与计算语言学协会于2014年6月在巴尔的摩举行的年度会议同时举行。这将使它能够接触到比其他情况下更广泛的受众，同时利用其东海岸的地理位置吸引来自附近地区的参与者。它的第一天将包括作为ACL会议的一部分安排的研究报告。在翌日，与会者将参与讨论，为改善计算方法在濒危语言研究中的应用制订短期议程。工作坊的论文将发表在计算语言学协会的会议记录上，另一份总结闭门会议结论的报告将会出炉。世界各地较小的发言者社区将从这些结果中受益，这将有助于更好地记录和保护濒危语言。

Contemporary efforts to document the world's endangered languages are dependent on the widespread availability of modern recording technologies, in particular digital audio and video recording devices and software to annotate the recordings that such devices produce. However, despite well over a decade of dedicated funding programs aimed at the documentation of endangered languages, the technological landscape that supports the activities of those involved in this work remains fragmented, and the promises of new technology remain largely unfulfilled. Moreover, the efforts of computer scientists, on the whole, are mostly disconnected from the day-to-day work of documentary linguists, making it difficult for the knowledge of each group to inform the other.The ComputEL workshop will address this state of affairs by bringing together field linguists and computer scientists to explore how computational techniques and tools can be created to better aid in the analysis of endangered languages. A particular focus will be on how to facilitate the process through which research results in this domain can be developed into software that is well-supported for use by those documenting endangered languages in the field.The workshop will be co-located with the Association for Computational Linguistics Annual Meeting in Baltimore in June 2014. This will allow it to reach a wider audience than would otherwise be possible, while taking advantage of its East Coast location to involve participants from nearby areas. Its first day will consist of research presentations scheduled as a part of the ACL meeting. On the following day, participants will take part in discussions designed to lay out a near-term agenda for the improved application of computational methods to the study of endangered languages.The papers from the workshop will be published in the Association for Computational Linguistics conference proceedings, and an additional report will be produced summarizing the conclusions of the closed meeting. Smaller speaker communities worldwide will benefit from the results which will support better documentation and preservation of endangered languages.