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Sa rawak L anguage T echnology ( SaLT ) Research Group

Sa rawak L anguage T echnology ( SaLT ) Research Group SaLT Initiatives: Preservation and Maintenance of Sarawak Languages. Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology. Universiti Malaysia Sarawak Associate Professor Alvin W. Yeo. Overview. Languages in Sarawak

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Sa rawak L anguage T echnology ( SaLT ) Research Group

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  1. Sarawak Language Technology (SaLT) Research Group SaLT Initiatives:Preservation and Maintenance of Sarawak Languages Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology Universiti Malaysia Sarawak Associate Professor Alvin W. Yeo

  2. Overview • Languages in Sarawak • Maintenance and Revitalisation: Holistic Approach • Sarawak Language Technology (SaLT) Research Group • SaLT Projects • Borneo Corpus Management System (BCMS) • Iban-English Machine Translation • TRanslation IBan-English (TRIBE) • Multimodal-INTegration (MINT) of Sketch and Melanau Daro-Matu Speech in Spatial Queries • Speech Language Dialog Systems (SLaDS) • Development of Language Tools • Current findings

  3. Where are we?

  4. East Malaysia> Sarawak> Kuching Kuching

  5. Introduction (cont’d) • Sarawak is a state rich in culture. • 27 ethnic groups in Sarawak (STB, 2005), each with its own culture and language. • Sarawak has 46 living languages and 1 extinct; according to the Ethnologue (Gordon, 2005) • Each ethnic group may have different languages • Sarawak Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka • 63 known languages in Sarawak

  6. Rationale Cumulative language and number of speakers (Ethnologue,2005)

  7. Problem • World’s linguistic and cultural diversity is under threat. • Many minority languages are on the brink of extinction. • Minority language communities • Further disadvantaged economically and socially. • Dominant languages • Exogamy • Revitalizing minority languages can bring economic and social benefits as well as cultural benefits.

  8. Holistic Approach: Framework for Language Revitalization and Maintenance Preservation of Culture Stakeholders Community/ civil society People Researchers Applications Ethnic group organisations Internet: Online Presence Software applications and operating systems Hardware: Input devices: keyboards, tablets/pen/stylus Comp. Scientists Research institutions Social Scientists Government agencies IT spec. Supporting Technologies Linguists NGOs Methodologies: engaging communities; development lifecycles Computing Technologies: Natural Language Processing, Image Processing, Speech Recognition and Generation Communi-ty readiness: ICT literacy Web techno-logies: Java, Flash Translators Industry Trainers …

  9. Sarawak Language Technologies (SaLT) Research Group

  10. SaLT • Role of technology in language maintenance and revitalisation • On revitalising and maintaining the existing conventional languages by building corpora, conducting research anddeveloping tools for Sarawak Ethnic Languages. Sarawak Language Technologies (SaLT) Research Group covers • Codification of the ethnic languages • Creation of corpora of the various languages in Sarawak • Research in computational linguistics projects • which involves languages and peoples of Sarawak • Development of tools: word processors, spell checkers

  11. Language Technology • Understanding and explication of language phenomena in a • computationally tractable form, resulting in • techniques for interchanging various linguistic forms • speech, text, morphology, syntax, semantics/meaning, discourse, knowledge, • thus leading to the creation and development of intelligent applications involving language.

  12. Lexicographer/Linguist/ comp. scientist Linguist/ comp. scientist General and conceptual dictionary PROCESSOR (tagger, parser, multimodal integration) APPLICATION (machine translation, multimodal spatial application) INPUT (corpus) Levels of Technology

  13. Specialists Needed • Lexicographers • Computer scientists DBA, SE & N/W (data maintenance & grid) • Linguists • Information Scientists • Psychologists • Anthropologists • Computational Linguistics Natural Language Processing

  14. Current Projects

  15. Current Projects (cont’d)

  16. Roadmap for SaLT

  17. Advisors and Organisations Involved

  18. Collaborators Organisations Involved • Tun Jugah Foundation • Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (Sarawak Branch) • Melanau Association • Dayak Bidayuh National Association • Sarawak Museum • Pustaka Negeri Sarawak • Majlis Adat Istiadat Universities Involved • UNIMAS (FCSIT, FCSHD, FSS, CLS) • Multimedia University • Universiti Teknologi Malaysia • Universiti Islam Antarabangsa Malaysia • Universiti Sains Malaysia • Universiti Malaya • Localisation Research Centre, University of Limerick, Ireland • University of Waikato, New Zealand

  19. a. Staff FCSIT AP Dr Alvin Yeo Wee (Head) AP Dr. Narayanan K. Dr Edwin Mit Suhaila Saee Sarah Flora Samson Nurfauza Jali Suriati Khartini Jali Sy. Fazlin Seyed Fadzir Lee Jun Choi FCSHD Dr. Ng Giap Weng D’oria Islamiah Wan Norizan CLS Dr. Ting Su Hie Salbia Hassan Yvonne Michelle Campbell Team members

  20. Team members (cont’d)

  21. Borneo Corpus Management System (BCMS) • Problem/Background: • Currently there is no existing corpus management system to manage corpora available in minority languages of Sarawak • Solution: • Build a system that is able to manage and maintain the corpora • Objectives: • To design an easy and usable Corpus Processing Toolkit for researchers • Integrate the various tools together in one single platform • Current Status: • Working on the Morphological Analysers and Spell Checkers

  22. Corpus Manager (After processing) Original Content Processed Content File tree that display the processed files. The file is stored in the folder based on category Editable Content Used to highlight the extracted information in the content

  23. Corpus Analyser: Sentence Splitter The output is each sentence of current document

  24. Iban-Corpus Development • Problem/Background • Indigenous languages in Sarawak are slowly dying out due to: • One way to stem this “extinction” of languages: • Provide more local content – but how?? • Solution • Translate English documents to documents in minority languages • MT is needed to facilitates and accelerates the translation process • Objectives • Identify a methodology that can be used to translate English to minority languages, by taking Iban as a case study • Current Status • Built Iban corpus with 23,833 words with 3,831 distinct words • Constructed bilingual lexicon with 1,688 words with 1,192 distinct words

  25. Iban-English Machine Translation • Problem/Background • Traditional knowledge (TK) is tacit knowledge; generally not stored and known only by the older generation, who speaks little English • TK is very important. It needs to be preserved and protected. • Machine Translation (MT) can help to preserve TK • Translate available resources into English so that it is accessible by all, e.g. researchers (social scientists) and younger generation • However, translation of closely related languages is easier • Solution • Translate TK documents to English through a closely related language as pivot language • Case study: Iban as source language, Malay as pivot language and English as target language

  26. Objectives • To demonstrate that the performance of translation through a pivot language is comparable with performance of direct translation • Realise benefits (efficiency) of translating multiple “similar” languages through a common pivot language • Current Status • Building of Iban corpus and lexicon • Linguistic comparison on Iban and Malay language

  27. Multimodal Integration: Preamble User sketching on the Wacom tablet with CogSketch sketch interface describing a place. Dragon Naturally Speaking software for capturing the speech with a microphone.

  28. Multimodal Integration of Sketch and Melanau Daro-Matu Speech in Spatial Queries (MINT) • Problem/Background • English: main communication medium • Language is unique and distinct • Individual uses different languages may have different approaches in conceptualizing, communicating, reasoning, expressing their thoughts • Translation is not sufficient enough • Building the entire system for certain targeted speakers is time consuming • Solution • Internationalisation (i18n) • Localisation (l10n)

  29. Objectives • Integrate Melanau Daro-Matu speech and sketch (image) modalities • Identify the interaction patterns of Melanau users. • Identify the similarities and difference of English, Malay and Melanau (extending to Iban as well) • Localise architecture and representation of multimodal integration in Melanau Daro-Matu, and other languages

  30. Input Capturing Sketch Speech Input Interpretation Sketch Interpretation Speech Interpretation Transcription Part-Of-Speech Tagging Tokenization Sentence Splitter Lexicon required Language-Dependent Components Tagging using trained corpus Grammar rules required Tagging corrections acquired from templates Annotated Text Spatial information retrieval Modalities Representation Sketch Representation Speech Representation Modalities Integration Sketch and Speech Integration Database Searching

  31. Spoken Language Dialogue System (SLaDS) • Problem/Background • Spoken language system (SLS) has become an ever-increasing human-system interface. • Many studies have been conducted by foreign researchers to unravel the challenge in the design of spoken language system. • This study focuses on the design and development of spoken language dialogue system within the context of Malaysian user. • Solution • The project is performed by conducting a simulation test of the real SLS system with local user. • The system is then evaluated by adopting the Wizard of Oz method with the objectives to determine its efficacy. • The result of this testing will be useful for the future development of Malaysian SLS.

  32. Objectives • To investigate the spoken language and interaction design, and its employment in the development of Spoken Language Dialog Systems • To determine the efficacy of imported usability evaluation techniques applied in the Spoken Language Dialogue Systems • Identify speech patterns to develop a predictive model for speech recognition • Current Status • To date, the study is already in its testing stage to capture the dialogue content. • Respondent is prompt to interact with the system. • The dialogue from the interaction will be taped, transcribed and analysed.

  33. SCREENSHOTS VIDEO Video showing interaction sample; Wizard’s Control Panel User’s view

  34. Research Projects: Fundamental Research Grant Minority Languages Online (MiLO): Preserving Cultures by Mobilising Minority Languages (of Sarawak) Online. (completed 30 June 2007) Continued with CLS, Univ. of Waikato Wikipedia approach to development of Bidayuh lexicon Bario Lakuh Digital Library (completed) Recordings of Kelabit songs Transcibed, translated With audio and video

  35. e-Vocabulary for Sarawak Malay Problems: Language endangerment Vocabulary of Sarawak Malay (Original source) Main source: Vocabulary book written by W.S.B.BUCK from Bau, which was published by Sarawak Civil Service on 11th May, 1932. Total ofword entries:1026 words

  36. AbiWord in Local Languages Background • One of the most widely used computer application nowadays is the word processor. • Open Source Software (OSS): can used, studied, and redistributed in modified or unmodified form without restriction Solution/Objectives • AbiWord (comprehensive word processor) to be localised • To identify the processes of translation of computing terminology

  37. Current Status:

  38. Screen shots Interface Example of Menu Panel

  39. Current Findings: Challenges • Resources of some languages available • Generally lacking; data collection very challenging • Writing systems and grammar rules do not exist • Lack of human resources • Fluent in the (untainted) form (translating, POS tagging)

  40. Current Findings: Bright future • Community Awareness • Associations of ethnic groups aware of need • Advanced in age interested, younger generation not so • Protocol followed • Upper management support required to “open doors” • Local researchers are interested • Colleagues & students • Machine translation, speech to text, text to speech • Development of speech corpus

  41. Multi-ethnic Group

  42. Concluding Remarks • Decreasing number of speakers of languages in Sarawak • Maintenance and Revitalisation: Holistic Approach • Sarawak Language Technology (SaLT) Research Group • SaLT Projects • Machine translation, multimodal integration, speech language dialog system, corpus management systems, online dictionaries/repositories, digital libraries • Challenges: community involvement and data collection and analysis • Silver lining: committed NGOs and researchers • Internationalisation and localisation approach

  43. Acknowledgements • Institutional support from • Universiti Malaysia Sarawak • Jugah Foundation, Melanau Association, Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (Sarawak Branch), Majlis Adat Istiadat, Dayak Bidayuh National Association • Financial Support grants • UNIMAS Fundamental Research Grant Scheme • Federal Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation Science Fund Grant Scheme (01-09-SF0028, SF0029, SF0030)

  44. Fifth International Cyberspace Conference on Ergonomics (CybErg 2008) • Theme: Local knowledge, Global Applications • Special Discussion on Maintenance and Preservation of Languages • On-going 15 Sept – 15 Oct 2008 • Free Registration • http://www.cyberg08.org/forum

  45. Sixth International Conference on IT In Asia (CITA’09) • Theme: “Enabling technologies for Knowledge-driven Society: People-Powered Systems” • Tracks on Computational Linguistics, Human Computer Interaction, Software Engineering • Kuching, Malaysia, 6- 9 July 2009; Rainforest Music Festival

  46. Thank YouTerima KasihJian Kenin

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