Travel Grant for US Participants for LT4All2019

在过去的十年中，人类语言技术（HLT）取得了惊人的进步，其中包括自动语音识别、机器翻译以及信息搜索和检索。这反过来又改变了人类在数字领域获取和共享信息和知识的方式。HLT的这些进步目前只适用于世界上非常有限的几种语言（不到2%）。尤其处于不利地位的是世界上数千种土著语言的使用者，包括北美的土著语言。然而，用这些语言开发HLT不仅仅是开发新算法或创建数据资源的问题：其文化和身份与其语言密不可分的土著人口必须充分参与HLT的开发。为此，作为联合国庆祝2019年国际土著语言年的一部分，在联合国教育、科学及文化组织（教科文组织）、欧洲语言资源协会（ELRA）和国际语言传播协会（ISCA）的联合赞助下，将于2019年12月在法国巴黎举办为期两天的“全民语言技术（LT4All）”会议。本次会议将为来自世界各地的教科文组织、政府、学术和行业代表、语言技术研究人员、语言学家、土著社区成员和语言使用者提供一个论坛，分享成就和挑战。该奖项将支持美国HLT研究人员，特别是学生和博士后研究员，以及美国土著民族社区的代表前往并充分参与LT4All。参加会议将在两个方面产生积极的社会和科学影响：a)由于HLT研究目前只针对一小部分语言，这将导致美国在HLT领域的研究人员对全球代表性不足的语言群体问题的知识接触和认识增加；b)支持美国土著社区代表将使他们参与信息交流，加强HLT研究人员，行业代表，政策制定者和未被充分代表的语言使用者。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The last decade has seen breathtaking advances in human language technology (HLT), which includes automatic speech recognition, machine translation, and information search and retrieval. This in turn has changed the way humankind access and share information and knowledge in the digital domain. These advances in HLT are currently available only for a very limited number of the world's languages (less than 2%). At particular disadvantage are speakers of thousands of indigenous languages of the world, including the native languages of North America. Developing HLT in these languages, however, is not merely a matter of developing new algorithms or creating data resources: indigenous populations whose culture and identity is inextricably tied with their language must be fully engaged in HLT development.To this end, and as a part of the United Nations' celebration of 2019 as the International Year of Indigenous Languages, a 2-day conference called "Language Technologies for All (LT4All)" is being organized under the joint auspices of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the European Language Resources Association (ELRA) and the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA) in Paris, France, in December, 2019. This conference will provide a forum for UNESCO, government, academic and industrial representatives, language technology researchers, linguists, indigenous community members, and language users from all over the world to share achievements and challenges. This award will support US HLT researchers, particularly students and post-doctoral fellows, and representatives of the US indigenous nations communities to travel to and fully participate in LT4All. Participation in the conference will have a positive societal and scientific impact in two directions: a) as the HLT research is nowadays targeted only at a small set of languages, it will lead to increasing the intellectual exposure and awareness of the US researchers in the field of HLT to issues of under-represented language groups worldwide, and b) supporting the representatives of US indigenous communities will allow them to participate in the information exchange to strengthen the multi-faceted information exchange between the HLT researchers, industry representatives, policymakers and the under-represented language users.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.