I Iberian SLTech 2009 Proceedings of the I Joint SIG-IL/Microsoft Workshop on Speech and Language Technologies for Iberian Languages Porto Salvo, Portugal, September 3-4, 2009 Edited by: António Teixeira, Miguel Sales Dias & Daniela Braga Published by: Designeed ISBN: 978-989-96278-1-9 Portuguese National Library Number: 298538/09
Preface The ISCA Special Interest Group on Iberian Languages (SIG-IL) board, pursuing the aims of organizing conferences, schools and workshops, promoting industry/university collaboration and offering a forum to discuss opportunities in research and industry applications in the field of Speech and Language Technology, decided to organize a new event, I Iberian SLTech - I Joint SIG-IL/Microsoft Workshop on Speech and Language Technologies for Iberian Languages. A practical way of making possible the event in 2009 was to join efforts with Microsoft Language Development Center (MLDC), in Portugal, associating the SIG-IL event to a new edition of their past Workshops (I Microsoft Workshop on Speech Technology - Building bridges between industry and academia, Porto Salvo, May 2, 2007 and Propor 2008 Special Session: Applications of Portuguese Speech and Language Technologies, September 10, 2008, Curia, Portugal). The event also had the support of Red Temática en Tecnologías del Habla (RTTH). The main objective for this new event is to create a forum for the exchange of ideas and promote collaboration in the fields of Speech and Language Technologies for all the institutions who work on Iberian Languages. It also our goal to continue this event in the following years and that it may be held in the different places of the SIG-IL geography. The Organization is honoured to receive Alex Acero as keynote speaker who will bring us the following topic: Building accurate and user-friendly speech systems. Alex Acero is the Research Area Manager of the Speech Group in Microsoft Research, in Redmond (USA) and is one of the world leadings researchers in Speech Technology, directing an organization with 70 researchers in audio, speech, multimedia, communication, natural language, and information retrieval. He is also an affiliate Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle. Dr. Acero is author of the books Acoustical and Environmental Robustness in Automatic Speech Recognition (Kluwer, 1993) and Spoken Language Processing (Prentice Hall, 2001). Our Scientific Committee selected the following contributions for presentation: 21 posters (3 from students), 4 recent PhDs, 2 demos and 8 groups and projects. The posters covered 6 areas: systems and applications; resources and tools; speech recognition; speech synthesis; gender, speaker and language recognition and language processing. These contributions were edited in online, CD and paper proceedings. We accepted 18 contributions with authors from Portugal, 15 from Spain, 3 from Germany, 1 from USA, 1 from Cuba and 1 from Brazil. We would like to send our special thanks to all the Chairs and Scientific Committee members that helped us in the proposals revision and conference organization in such a tight schedule, to our keynote speaker for bringing us such an interesting topic and to all authors for submitting the most recent advances of their work on Iberian languages speech and language processing. We expect that this is the first edition of a growing annual event that aims to attract more researchers in all countries that work on the latest advances on speech and language processing for the Iberian Languages. The Iberian SL Tech 2009 Organizers, António Teixeira, SIG-IL Chair, IEETA Daniela Braga, Microsoft
Committees General Chairs António Teixeira, SIG-IL Chair, Universidade de Aveiro/IEETA, Portugal Miguel Dias, Microsoft, Portugal Local Organization Committee Francisco Pires, Microsoft, Portugal Bruno Reis Bechtlufft, Microsoft, Portugal Demos Chair Rubén San-Segundo, SIG-IL ISCA Liaison, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain Program Chair Aldebaro Klautau, SIG-IL Secretary, Universidade Federal do Pará, Brazil Juan Arturo Nolazco Flores, SIG-IL Vice-Chair, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico Carmen García Mateo, University of Vigo, Spain Presentations and Panels Chair António Teixeira, SIG-IL Chair, Universidade de Aveiro/IEETA, Portugal Scientific Committee Abel Herrera Camacho, FI-UNAM, México Alberto Abad, INESC-ID Lisboa, Portugal Alberto Simões, Universidade do Minho, Portugal Aldebaro Klautau, Universidade Federal do Pará, Brazil Alex Acero, Microsoft Research, USA Alexander Gelbuck, CIC - IPN, México Alfonso Ortega, Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain Alvaro Iriarte, Universidade do Minho, Portugal Amália Andrade, CLUL/Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal Andreia Rauber, Universidade do Minho, Portugal Antonia Marti Antonín, Universidad de Barcelona, Spain António Bonafonte, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain António Branco, FCUL, Portugal António Serralheiro, L2F INESC-ID and Academia Militar, Portugal António Teixeira, IEETA/Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal Ascensión Gallardo, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain
Belinda Maia, FLUL, Portugal Carlos Meneses, ISEL, Portugal Carlos Teixeira, FCUL, Portugal Céu Viana, FLUL, Portugal Ciro Martins, IEETA/Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal Daniela Braga, MLDC/Microsoft, Portugal Diana Santos, SINTEF, Norway Doroteo Torres, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain Encarna Segarra, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain Eva Navas, Universidad del País Vasco, Spain Fábio Violaro, Universidade Estadual de Campinas - UNICAMP, Brazil Fernando Gil Resende Jr., Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Fernando Perdigão, Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal Francisco Campillo, Universidade de Vigo, Spain Francisco Vaz, IEETA/Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal Frank Seide, Microsoft Research Asia - Speech Group Hugo Meinedo, INESC-ID Lisboa, Portugal Inmaculada Hernaez Rioja, Universidad del País Vasco, Spain Isabel Trancoso, INESC-ID/IST, Portugal João Veloso, Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto, Portugal Jorge Baptista, Universidade do Algarve, Portugal José Manuel Pardo, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain José Ramón Calvo de Lara, CENATAV, Cuba José Teixeira, Universidade do Minho, Portugal Juan Manuel Montero, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain Juan Nolazco Flores, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico Luís Caldas Oliveira, INESC-ID/IST, Portugal Luis Hernandez, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain Luis Villaseñor Pineda, INAOE, Mexico Manuel Montes y Gómez, INAOE, Mexico Maria Aldina Marques, Universidade do Minho, Portugal Maria Helena Mira Mateus, ILTEC, Portugal Mário Silva, FCUL, Portugal Nestor Yoma, Universidad de Chile, Chile Nuno Mamede, INESC-ID/IST, Portugal Paula Carvalho, FCUL, Portugal Paulo Quaresma, Universidade de Évora, Portugal Plínio Barbosa, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil Ranniery Maia, NICT, Japan Ricardo de Córdoba, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain Rubén San Segundo, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain Sérgio Paulo, INESC-ID Lisboa, Portugal Thomas Pellegrini, INESC-ID Lisboa, Portugal Vera Strube de Lima, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil Violeta Quental, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Xavier Gómez Guinovart, Universidade de Vigo, Spain Xosé Ramón Freixeiro Mato, Universidade da Coruña, Spain