Educational Informatics – Ixa Group. Language Technology. https://www.ehu.eus/ehusfera/ixa News from the Ixa Group in the University of the Basque Country Wed, 03 Dec 2014 15:16:29 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.6.4 BerbaTek project’s results and demos. https://www.ehu.eus/ehusfera/ixa/2012/02/10/berbatek-projects-results-and-demos/ https://www.ehu.eus/ehusfera/ixa/2012/02/10/berbatek-projects-results-and-demos/#respond Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:36:38 +0000 http://www.ehu.eus/ehusfera/ixa/?p=953 BerbaTek is a recently finished strategic research project with a duration of three years (2009-2011) funded by the Industry Department of the Basque Government.In order to carry out the project, a consortium was created which was made up of the Elhuyar Foundation, the IXA and Aholab research groups of the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country, [...]]]> BerbaTek is a recently finished strategic research project with a duration of three years (2009-2011) funded by the Industry Department of the Basque Government.In order to carry out the project, a consortium was created which was made up of the Elhuyar Foundation, the IXA and Aholab research groups of the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country, the technology centre Vicomtech and the foundation Tecnalia Research & Innovation.

 

Yesterday, the results of this project were presented in a press conference with representatives of the Basque Government. Throughout the BerbaTek project we have created several language tools, resources and some demos to show the potential of the integration of language, voice and multimedia technologies, when it comes to creating applications for the areas that make up the languages industry, in other words, for translation, contents and teaching. Three demos were presented in the press conference:

  • Automatic dubbing demo. The automatic dubbing of films is a difficult challenge for the moment (different voices, colloquial language, different speeds…), but for some types of documentaries (single speaker, voice-over, coordination of the lips not necessary or unimportant …) we’ve done a demo that performs satisfactorily. Given a documentary in Spanish and its transcription (which can be obtained automatically by means of any of the dictation programs for Spanish in the market), Vicomtech–IK4’s temporal alignment technology creates a subtitles file, a transcription with time marks for the beginning and end of each sentence. Then, the Matxin MT system, developed by the IXA group, automatically translates the subtitles into Basque, and Aholab’s text-to-speech technology obtains the synchronized voice. We have successfully applied this demo to the single-speaker sections of the television program Teknopolis produced by Elhuyar. This demo can be seen at work here.
  • Semantic multimedia search engine for science and technology content. This search engine is based on WNTerm, an ontology specialized in science and technology wich was created by Elhuyar and IXA. It is a network where scientific and technological terms are semantically related to each other, with subclasses, synonyms, etc. A new augmented version will be presented next month.
  • Personal teacher for language learning. For the field of education, we have created a demo of a personal tutor for language learning. The tutor is a 3D avatar developed by Vicomtech-IK4 that shows emotions, can speak Basque and can understand what is said in Basque, using Aholab‘s technology. The tutor assists us in various tasks: we can do grammar exercises (verb conjugation, word inflection…) and reading comprehension exercises (fill in gaps in a text, choosing from several options) that are created automatically from texts using technology from IXA; we can evaluate our pronunciation, with Aholab technology; or it helps us when writing texts, with inflection of words, writing of numbers or querying dictionaries, by means of technology from IXA and Elhuyar. By the moment this demo works in local mode, but it will beavailable online by next spring.

The pieces of news has been received by media today:

Further information about this project can be found at Berbatek project’s website.

]]> https://www.ehu.eus/ehusfera/ixa/2012/02/10/berbatek-projects-results-and-demos/feed/ 0 Mitxelena Award for PhD theses: Maite Oronoz eta Larraitz Uria https://www.ehu.eus/ehusfera/ixa/2011/04/06/mitxelena-award_oronoz-uria/ https://www.ehu.eus/ehusfera/ixa/2011/04/06/mitxelena-award_oronoz-uria/#comments Wed, 06 Apr 2011 11:46:22 +0000 http://www.ehu.eus/ehusfera/ixa/?p=498  

Our colleague Maite Oronoz won last Monday the II. Koldo MItxelena Award for PhD Theses organized by Euskaltzaindia (the Academy of Basque Language) and the University of the Basque Country.

CONGRATULATIONS Maite!

Besides, our colleague Larraitz Uria’s PhD thesis was also nominated for this award.

Both theses face language error detection. Maite’s thesis deals [...]]]>  

Our colleague Maite Oronoz won last Monday the II. Koldo MItxelena Award for PhD Theses organized by Euskaltzaindia (the Academy of Basque Language) and  the University of the Basque Country.

CONGRATULATIONS Maite!

Besides, our colleague Larraitz Uria’s PhD thesis was also nominated for this award.

Both theses face language error detection. Maite’s thesis deals with it from a computational point of view, while Larraitz’ work does it from a linguistic perspective.

Title of Maite’s thesis: Euskarazko errore sintaktikoak detektatzeko eta zuzentzeko baliabideen garapena: datak, postposizio-lokuzioak eta komunztadura.
(Saroi, a system to detect and correct syntactic mistakes: dates, complex postpositions, and agreement.)
Maite’s supervisors: Arantza Diaz de Ilarraza and Koldo Gojenola
Title of Larraitz’ thesis: Euskarazko erroreen eta desbideratzeen analisirako lan-ingurunea. Determinatzaile-erroreen azterketa eta prozesamendua.
(A framework for the analysis of errors and deviations in Basque texts. Analysis and processing of errors on the use of determiners.
Larraitz’ supervisors: Igone Zabala and Montse Maritxalar
Publications:

]]> https://www.ehu.eus/ehusfera/ixa/2011/04/06/mitxelena-award_oronoz-uria/feed/ 1 A new European Project: PATHS https://www.ehu.eus/ehusfera/ixa/2011/02/04/paths_project/ https://www.ehu.eus/ehusfera/ixa/2011/02/04/paths_project/#comments Fri, 04 Feb 2011 13:42:28 +0000 http://www.ehu.eus/ehusfera/ixa/?p=184

IXA Group is participating with other 5 partners in a new European project: PATHS (2010-2012). The PATHS project (Personalised Access To cultural Heritage Spaces) primarily addresses objective ICT-2009.4.1: Digital Libraries and Digital Preservation. It relates to target outcome (d), adaptive cultural experiences, by creating personalised views of various forms of cultural expression, adapting these [...]]]>

IXA Group is participating with other 5 partners in a new European project: PATHS (2010-2012).
The PATHS project (Personalised Access To cultural Heritage Spaces)  primarily addresses objective ICT-2009.4.1: Digital Libraries and Digital Preservation. It relates to target outcome (d), adaptive cultural experiences, by creating personalised views of various forms of cultural expression, adapting these views to the background and cognitive context of the user and offering meaningful guidance about the interpretation of cultural works. PATHS will make important progress in this direction.

Europeana: Significant amounts of cultural heritage material are now available through online digital library portals. However, this vast amount of cultural heritage material can also be overwhelming for many users who are provided with little or no guidance on how to find and interpret this information.

The PATHS project will create a system that acts as an interactive personalised tour guide through existing digital library collections. The system will offer suggestions about items to look at and assist in their interpretation. Navigation will be based around the metaphor of a path through the collection. A path can be based around any theme, for example artist and media (“paintings by Picasso”), historic periods (“the Cold War”), places (“Venice”) and famous people (“Muhammad Ali”). Users will be able to construct their own paths or follow pre-defined ones.

The PATHS project will provide users with innovative ways to access and utilise the contents of digital libraries that enrich their experiences of these resources. This will be achieved by extending the state-of-the-art in user-driven information access and by applying language technologies to analyse and enrich online content. The project will take a user-centred approach to development to accommodate the needs, interests and preferences of different types of users.

These goals shall be realised through the following objectives :

  • Analysis of users’ requirements for access to Cultural Heritage collections
  • Organisation and enrichment of Cultural Heritage content for use within a navigation system
  • Implementation of a system for navigating Cultural Heritage resources
  • Techniques for providing personalised access to Cultural Heritage content
  • Porting the navigation system for use on mobile devices and Facebook
  • Evaluation with user groups and in field trials

Therefore, the project will research on the following areas:

  • Information Access: The project will develop a user-driven navigation through collections of information, gathering the users’ requirements and modeling it.

  • Educational Informatics: Adapting to individual learners in relation to being directed and being allowed the freedom to explore autonomously.

  • Content interpretation and enrichment: Representation and sharing of information about items, and identifying background information related to the items in cultural heritage collections

IXA Group will work mainly in content processing and enrichment. This means that content from Cultural Heritage sources will processed to a multi-layered network and augmented with additional information that will enrich the user’s experience. The additional information will include links between items in the collection and to external sources like Wikipedia or other relevant collections. The resulting multi-layered network will form the basis for the paths used to navigate the collection.

The PATHS consortium contains six partners.

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