On June 12-15, 2023, EASIER team members attended the 24th Annual Conference of the European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT 2023) in Tampere, Finland, where they co-organized the 2ndInternational Workshop on Automatic Translation for Signed and Spoken Languages (AT4SSL 2023).
The aim of the AT4SSL workshop, co-organized with the SignON project was to be a venue for presenting and discussing (complete, ongoing, and/or future) research on automatic translation between sign and spoken languages. The workshop brought together researchers, practitioners, interpreters, and innovators working in related fields and opened a guided discussion on current challenges, innovations, and future developments related to the automatic translation between sign and spoken languages.
The event featured a round table moderated by Mathias Müller (University of Zurich), one of the EASIER team members. The round table generated a lively and productive discussion around the following topics: (i) quality of recognition and synthesis models and user-expectations; (ii) co-creation – deaf and hearing people joining forces toward a common goal and (iii) sign-to-spoken and spoken-to-sign translation technology in media.
Among the audience was Tiina Saarijärvi-Kivelä, a senior lecturer for sign language interpretation at Diaconia University of Applied Sciences in Finland and many representatives of EASIER and SignON. Co-organization of the workshop has further strengthened the ties and cooperation between the two projects.
The event was interpreted into Finnish sign language and International Sign.
To see more photos and highlights of some of the presentations please visit the workshop’s Twitter account, here.
About EAMT
The annual EAMT conference regularly gathers over 100 participants from across Europe, as well as guests from Asia and North America. Conference presentations feature in-depth looks at the latest MT research, tools, and technology, often before the technology has become widely available. Presentations also include enterprise case studies from large corporations and organizations using MT, best practices from the global localization industry, the fruits of cutting-edge research from universities and research centers, professional translators’ experiences, and the results of EU-funded ICT projects. The 24th edition was jointly organized by the European Association for Machine Translation, Tampere University, and the University of Eastern Finland.