Recent Developments of COCOSDA-A Progress Report
Lin-shan Lee
National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan
Republic of China
lsl@iis.sinica.edu.tw
COCOSDA is an international organization
for coordinating the globalized efforts in language resources and speech
technology evaluation. Currently, COCOSDA is organized with a structure which
reflects the two dimensions of its functionalities: "Topic Domains"
and "Regional Programs". The former considers the dynamic technology
environments, while the latter addresses the regional differences and
activities. Four topic domains have been established: Evaluation of Speech
Understanding/Dialogue Systems, Multi-Modal Corpora, Corpus Annotation Tools
and Local Languages. Six regional programs are currently present: North
America, Europe, Asia, Oceania, Latin America and Africa. In this report the
recent developments of COCOSDA, starting with the previous COCOSDA Workshop at
Eurospeech, Budapest 1999, including all relevant activities and programs and
the current organization of the Central Coordinating Committee (CCC), will be
briefly reported.
The goal of
COCOSDA is to set up, encourage and support globalized coordination and
cooperation in developing spoken language resources and technology assessment
methodologies. Collaboration in these areas which transcends national
boundaries is important both because of the scientific value attached to such
systematic work encompassing large number of languages and analytical
approaches, and also because of the practical need to establish common
methodologies for technology performance description and quantitative
comparison The initiative for such international efforts came about as the
result of a series of meetings:
- March 1982, Gaithersburg, USA
- September 1989, Noordwijkerhout, the Netherlands
- November 1990, Kobe, Japan
- September 1991, Chiavari, Italy
Starting 1992,
formal COCOSDA Workshops have been held yearly as satellite events as ICSLP in
even years and Eurospeech in odd years. These include:
─October 1992, Banff, Canada, ICSLP'92
─September 1993, Berlin, Germany, EUROSPEECH
'93
─September 1994, Yokohama, Japan, ICSLP'94
─September 1995, Madrid, Spain, EUROSPEECH '95
─October 1996, Philadelphia, USA, ICSLP'96
─September 1997, Rhodes, Greece, EUROSPEECH '97
─November 1998, Sydney, Australia, ICSLP'98
─September 1999, Budapest, Hungary,
Eurospeech '99
These annual
workshops have been serving as forums for informal presentation of the state of
the art, discussions, and decisions on actions to be taken during the following
year.
During the
Budapest meeting held in Sept 1999 at Eurospeech, it was proposed that COCOSDA
should organizetopic domains〞and regional Programs〞as the two dimensions of its
functionalities. Thetopic domains〞reflect the global issues including the
dynamic technology environments, whileregional programs〞address the regional differences and
activities. Eachtopic domain〞orregional program〞can be organized by a rapporteur〞, whose
responsibilities include organizing presentations or sessions in COCOSDA
Workshops. Some possible titles for topic domains〞were suggested. It was also suggested that
the Central Coordinating Committee(CCC)of COCOSDA should be re-organized, and some
possible names for convenor , deputy convenor for 2000-2001 were suggested.
In March 2000, a
few key officers were decided via e-mails. Lin-shan Lee at National Taiwan
University , Taiwan was assigned the duty as the convenor, and Khalid Choukri
of ELRA , France as the deputy convenor. Two new topic domains were then
decided via e-mail discussions: the topic domain ofEvaluation of Speech Understanding /
Dialogue Systems〞has Wolfgang Minker of Daimlerchrysler , Germany as
its rapporteur, while the topic domain ofMulti-modal Corpora〞has Satoshi Nakamura of ATR , Japan as its
rapporteur. Three regional programs were also initiated, Khalid Choukri of
ELRA, France as the rapporteur of Europe, Shuichi Itahashi of University of
Tsukuba , Japan as the rapporteur of Asia, and Bruce Millar of Australian
National University , Australia as the rapporteur of Oceania. Great efforts
were also made in organizing sessions in ICSLP 2000 on Language Resources and
Technology Evaluation, including a special session plus a regular session.
Much more
actions were then taken during the Athens meetings held May/June 2000 at LREC
conference. The Major conclusions of the meetings are summarized below.Corpus
Annotation Tools〞andLocal Languages〞could be two new topic domains, and
possible rapporteurs were suggested. The term of "local languages" is to replace the previously
used term ofminority languages〞. Although many local languages are spoken
in different regions , many issues regarding local languages are common across
different regions(e.g. experiences in collecting corpora , technologies
for developing applications , and social , cultural , economic considerations), which
could be addressed by this topic domain. Two new regional programs for Africa
and Latin America could be established, since significant activities in
collecting corpora and developing applications in these regions have been
observed, and possible rapporteurs were suggested. Moreover, further approaches
were discussed for making efficient use of the Web for COCOSDA activities to be
accessed by the global research community.
Much more actions
were then taken during June - Sept 2000.Two new topic domains were actually
developed via e-mail discussions. The topic domain ofCorpus Annotation Tools〞has Steven
Bird of LDC , USA as its rapporteur, and the topic domain of Local
Languages〞has Dafydd Gibbon of University of Bielefeld , Germany
as its rapporteur. Two new regional programs were established via e-mail
discussions as well. Justus Roux of University of Stellenbosch, South Africa as
the rapporteur for Africa, and Elsa Mora of University of Los Andes, Venezuela
as the rapporteur for Latin America. The session organization(including
a special and a regular sessions)in ICSLP 2000 was finalized. Generic
Questionnaires were developed for topic domains and regions to collect information
from the research community worldwide. Great efforts were also made trying to
improve the COCOSDA Website. The COCOSDA Workshop and relevant activities in
ICSLP 2000 were organized.
The Central
Coordinating Committee(CCC)has been re-organized. The Committee has
two parts, a working group and an advisory committee. The CCC members as of Oct
2000 are listed below:
(T)Working
Group:
·Officers
─ convenor:Lin-shan Lee , Taiwan
─ deputy convenor:Khalid Choukri , France
─ secretary:Nick Campbell , Japan
· Topic Domain Rapporteurs
─ Evaluation of Speech Understanding /
Dialogue Systems:Wolfgang Minker ,Germany
─ Multi-modal Corpora:Satoshi
Nakamura , Japan
─ Corpus Annotation Tools:Steven
Bird , USA
─ Local Languages:Dafydd Gibbon , Germany
· Regional Program Rapporteurs
─ Europe:Khalid Choukri , France
─ Asia:Shuichi Itahashi , Japan
─ Oceania:Bruce Millar , Australia
─ Africa:Justus Roux , South Africa
─ Latin America:Elsa Mora , Venezuela
· Data Center Representatives
─ LDC:Steven Bird , USA
─ ELRA:Khalid Choukri , France
(U)Advisory
Committee:
· Adrian Fourcin , UK
· Hiroya Fujisaki , Japan
· Akira Kurematsu , Japan
· Mark Liberman , USA
· Joseph Mariani , France
· Louis Pols , Netherlands
W、More
Information
More information
about COCOSDA is available at the Website below:
http://www.itl.atr.co.jp/cocosda/