For those already familiar with our conference systems, Swapcard and Microsoft Teams, we provide the following guide to quickly access our conference sessions. However, we do recommend that you also look over the Introduction for Attendees document as well, so that you don’t overlook something.
First, a brief reminder about conference etiquette: Please be mindful of how your participation in conference sessions affects the speaker and other attendees. Keep yourself muted and only participate verbally or via chat message when acknowledged by the session moderator. Use the private chat features in Teams and Swapcard to communicate directly with others.
Next, please be aware that all sessions at AMTA 2020 will be recorded and that the conference organizers consider attendance at any session as tacit permission for being recorded. If you are concerned about this, you may want to wait until sessions are over and then watch the recordings.
Swapcard
After registering for AMTA 2020, you will receive an e-mail from Swapcarda few days before the conference. Click on the Let’s get started button in the email to enter Swapcard. If you are unable to login to Swapcard and/or see the conference event, please send an email to amta2020@amtaweb.org. Help options are available in Swapcard, and the Introduction for Attendees document contains further details about using this application.
If Swapcard asks you to provide an event code, enter the one included in the initial email you received.
Microsoft Teams
Within a day or two after receiving an email from Swapcard, you will receive an e-mail from Microsoft Teams. Click on the Open Microsoft Teams button in the email. A browser page will open that gives you the option of opening Microsoft Teams in your browser or installing and opening the Teams desktop application on your computer. If you already have the desktop application installed, it will open automatically after a few seconds.
Please note: if you have a Microsoft Teams account for work, you will need to switch from your work account to the conference account that was created for you in order to have full access to AMTA 2020 content. This is accomplished by clicking on the dropdown in the upper right-hand corner of the Teams app or browser window next to your user icon and selecting Microsoft (Guest). If you do not see this dropdown, there’s a good chance you registered for the conference using an email address different from your work email address. If so, please contact business@amtaweb.org to ask that your registered email address be changed to your work email address. You will then receive another email at your work address and when you click on the link to open Teams, the dropdown should appear.
Finding and entering a specific session at AMTA 2020
In Teams, there is a separate channel in the AMTA 2020 Conference team for the conference tracks, keynotes, demos, tutorials, workshops, etc. Conference sessions are held as meetings in these channels. There are also channels containing ongoing meetings for each Exhibitor or Sponsor. While you can attend the conference sessions or visit Exhibitors or Sponsors by searching for and joining the meetings in these channels, there is a much simpler and better way. In Swapcard, do the following:
In Conference Schedule or My Schedule find the session you want to join.
Click on the session name to open the session details.
Click on the red link in the details that says XX Session Link.
Your browser will open and you will either be able to join the meeting in the browser, or if the Teams desktop application is installed, it will open automatically after a few seconds and you can join the meeting there.
In either case, after previewing your camera and microphone settings (please make sure you are muted when entering talk sessions!) click the Join now button.
Networking and Help
At the top of the main menu in Swapcard you will find links to Swapcard and MS Teams Public Help Desks as well as to the Networking Area. The Swapcard link will take you to a discussion in Swapcard. The MS Teams and Networking links will take you to ongoing meetings in the corresponding channels in Teams.
The Help Desks have an obvious purpose, but when you join the Networking meeting, you can see who is there by looking at the meeting participants. Then you can decide if you want to participate in any discussion going on in that meeting, or you can leave the meeting and invite someone into a private Teams chat. Or, you may want to start a meeting of your own right in the Networking channel by clicking on the Meet button in the upper right-hand corner, modifying the meeting title as desired, joining the meeting, and then inviting others to join.
Welcome to AMTA 2020!
The organizing committee of AMTA 2020 is very happy to welcome you to the conference. We are pleased to present a pre-conference day of workshops and tutorials followed by the main conference, which features six keynote talks and many interesting sessions in the Commercial, Research, and Government tracks spread over three days
This document will guide you through navigating the conference. But before we begin with the how-to section of this document, we’d like to say a few words about etiquette during the conference and the recording of the conference sessions.
Conference Etiquette
To ensure a success conference and an efficient and respectful flow of ideas, please keep the following rules of the road in mind during the conference.
Be mindful of how your participation in a session affects the speaker and other attendees.
If you are not a presenter or organizer, please keep your microphone muted during the presentation.
Only presenters or organizers should share their screen during a session.
If you pose a question or comment in the meeting chat, be courteous and brief.
We encourage you to use the private chat feature on the main Microsoft Teams view to communicate directly with other attendees.
And although it’s hard to imagine having to do so, the conference organizers reserve the right to remove disruptive participants from sessions.
Recording of Sessions
AMTA 2020 is the biennial conference of the Association for Machine Translations in the Americas and will be run according to US policy. This paragraph serves as notification that all sessions at AMTA 2020 will be recorded and that the organizers of the conference consider attendance at any session as tacit permission for being recorded. It is therefore the responsibility of any attendee who does not want to be recorded to leave any live session before recording begins. Such attendees will, however, still have access to the recorded sessions for the duration of the conference and for a period of weeks after the conference.
Finding your way around AMTA 2020
We will be using two applications at for conference, Microsoft Teams and Swapcard.
The conference will take place within Microsoft Teams, a business-oriented communication and collaboration platform that combines workplace chat, video meetings, and file storage. Our instance of Microsoft Teams has been generously provided for the conference by Microsoft, a Visionary Sponsor of AMTA 2020.
Swapcard offers convenient functionality for viewing the conference schedule, creating your own conference calendar, finding out about presenters and other attendees, and one-click entry into the conference sessions in Microsoft Teams.
In this document, you’ll learn:
How to access and log in to the AMTA 2020 instances of the applications
How to find and join a particular event at the conference.
How to use the functionality necessary to take part in a session
Note: All of the following instructions assume that you are on a computer with a standard browser and a working Internet connection with adequate speed to support video conferencing.
Swapcard
After registering for AMTA 2020, you will receive an e-mail from hello@swapcard.com that contains the following graphic:
To begin using Swapcard:
Click on the Let’s get started button.
Your browser will open and navigate to the Swapcard site for AMTA 2020.
The Home screen for the conference looks like this:
Click on the down arrow beside your name on the menu bar to add as much information as you would like to your profile. (We encourage you to add a photograph and information about your position and interest in MT to facilitate more personal interaction during the conference.)
Note: on subsequent log-ins to Swapcard, you should access this URL: https://app.swapcard.com/event/amta-2020-orlando. If Swapcard asks you to provide an event code, enter the one that you received in the initial e-mail.
Important links on the Swapcard home screen:
Conference Schedule
The overall schedule for the conference, including information about all workshops, tutorials, keynote addresses, and track sessions. The Conference Schedule offers a view of each day’s sessions, with times listed in your local time zone.
My Schedule
A conference schedule featuring only those items that you have selected from the Conference Schedule
Speakers
Information about all of the presenters
Attendees
Profile information for all of the attendees
Building your own schedule in Swapcard:
You can create a personalized schedule of those sessions that you find interesting. The links created will allow you to attend the sessions at their scheduled time and access the recordings of the sessions at your convenience.
Click on Conference Schedule
Navigate through each day of the conference by clicking on the date tabs along the top of the schedule
Click on the calendar icon to the right of the title of sessions that interest you.
These items will now be displayed in the My Schedule view.
Microsoft Teams
Downloading and installing the desktop version of Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is available as a desktop application, a browser-based application, and as a mobile app. To enjoy full functionality, we recommend that you download the desktop application, which is available at no cost.
To install the application, run the file that was downloaded to your computer.
On a Windows 10 computer, for instance, go to your Downloads folder and double-click on Teams_windows_x64.exe and follow the instructions presented to you.
Please note: If you have a Microsoft Teams account for work, you will need to switch from your work account to the account created for you for the conference to have full access to AMTA 2020 content. For instructions on how to do this, see the inset below. If you registered for the conference using an address different from your work e-mail, you may have to contact business@amtaweb.org to request that your conference e-mail address be changed to your work e-mail address.
Joining the AMTA 2020 conference in Microsoft Teams
Registrants will be sent an e-mail from Microsoft Teams with the subject line “You have been added as a guest to Microsoft in Microsoft teams.” The e-mail contains this graphic:
To enter the Microsoft Teams instance for the conference:
Click on the Open Microsoft Teams button in the graphic.
Your browser will open and navigate to a page that looks like this:
This page gives you the option of opening Microsoft Teams in your browser or opening the application.
If you’ve installed the application, click on Open Microsoft Teams; otherwise, click on Continue on this browser.
Microsoft Teams main window
Microsoft Teams organizes events around the concepts of teams and subordinate channels. For the purposes of AMTA 2020, there will be one team (“AMTA 2020 Conference”), of which all attendees are a member, and separate channels for each of the following:
General
AMTA 2020 Help Desk
AMTA 2020 Networking Area
AMTA 2020 Business Meeting Session
Key Note Sessions
Research Track Sessions
Commercial Track Sessions
Government Track Sessions
Demonstrations Sessions
Tutorials Track Sessions
A channel for each Workshop
Student Mentoring Sessions
A channel for each Exhibitor and Sponsor
To see a list of the Channels:
Click on the Teams icon in the vertical toolbar on the left side of the main screen.
Note: some channels might be hidden to avoid clutter in the interface. To view hidden channels, click on the “X hidden channels” text at the bottom of the list of channels and click on Show next to the channel you want to display.
Within each channel, you will see tabs along the top of the channel window for:
Posts, under which you will find
Meetings that have been set up for each scheduled session within that channel, including public conversations specific to those meetings.
Any other public conversations that have taken place within that channel.
Files, under which you will find
The files that have been saved to that channel, such as presentations and papers.
Wiki, under which you will find:
A wiki for that channel that all attendees of AMTA 2020 can contribute to.
Finding and entering a specific session at AMTA 2020
There are two methods for finding and entering specific sessions at the conference. The first method, using Swapcard, is strongly recommended as it requires only a few clicks and will avoid having to search for the session in Teams, which may be in a hidden channel.
In Swapcard:
In Conference Schedule or My Schedule find the event that you want to join.
Click on the name of the session to open the details of that session.
Click on the red link in the details that says XX Session Link.
Your browser should open and you should be given the choice to join the event in the Microsoft Teams desktop application or the browser-based Teams view.
If the desktop application is installed, it will automatically open after a second or two. Otherwise you can click on the option to open the browser-based version.
In Microsoft Teams:
Go to the appropriate channel for the session. If the channel is hidden, you will have to click on the “X hidden channels” text at the bottom of the list of channels, click on Show next to the channel you are looking for, and then click on the displayed channel to open it.
Locate the meeting of the desired session in the channel.
Click on Join.
Entering the Meeting:
Regardless of which method you use to navigate to the meeting, you will be taken to a screen that allows you to:
Preview your microphone and video settings before joining.
Join the meeting by clicking on Join now.
Microsoft Teams Meeting window
Once you have entered the meeting, you should see the Microsoft Teams Meeting window. The display in the main part of the window depends on whether there are other participants already in the meeting, whether anything is being shared, and whether any attendees are on video.
Leaving a Meeting
To leave a meeting at any time, click on the red Leave button in the upper right corner.
Microsoft Teams Meeting Toolbar
Once you have joined a meeting, a toolbar will be presented along the top right of the screen.
The toolbar has six icons. From left to right they are:
Show/Hide participants
This control allows you to open and close a view of the current participants in the meeting. When this option is activated, a pane on the right of the screen opens with a scrollable list of the participants. To close this pane, you can click on the icon in the toolbar or on the X in the upper right corner of the pane.
Show/Hide conversation
This control allows you to open and close a pane that displays a log of chat messages that have been created during the meeting. You can also create a chat message and send it to the attendees. This feature is particularly helpful for submitting questions for the speaker during the session. Please note: Any message that you type will be visible to all attendees.
Raise your hand
Clicking here inserts a raised hand icon beside your name in the participant list, which can be used to indicate you have a question during the Q&A period.
More actions
This toolbar item opens a drop-down menu of several additional features:
Turing on/off live captions. This feature provides an automatic transcription of anything spoken in the session.
Adjusting your device settings if you have more than one option for speakers, microphone, or camera
Turn camera on/off
This allows you to turn your video camera on and off. When your camera is turned off, a diagonal slash will appear through the icon.
Turn microphone on/off
This allows you mute and unmute your microphone. When your microphone is muted, a diagonal slash will appear through the icon. All attendees will be muted initially by the session moderator, and we ask that you only unmute yourself if you are recognized by the moderator to ask a question during the Q&A
Share options
This control allows you to select a specific application window or your desktop with the participants.
Chat features in Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams has three chat features, one for private conversations while the other two are for broadcasting messages to all participants in a meeting or in a channel.
Private chats from the main Microsoft Teams window
To open a private chat outside of a meeting:
From the main Microsoft Teams window, click on the Chat icon on the vertical toolbar.
The chat pane should open along the left side of the window.
Click on the New Chat icon ()at the top of the chat pane.
Start typing the name of the person you would like to chat with in the To: field. You must type at least the first few letters of their first name or e-mail address to find them.
A drop-down list of people should appear as you type.
Click on the name of the person you would like to chat with.
Type your message in the new message field at the bottom of the screen.
Click on the arrow to the right of the new message field to send your message.
Or, you can click on the Video Call or Audio Call buttons () in the upper right corner of the window to engage in a voice or video call.
Public chats (“Conversations”) within the main Microsoft Teams window
Below a text post or meeting in a channel, there is a Reply line. You can reply to the post or make a comment on the meeting by typing text in this field and clicking on the send icon to the lower right of the field.
Public chats (“Conversations”) within a session
To use the Conversation feature within a Microsoft Teams Meeting
On the meeting toolbar, click on the Show conversation icon.
The conversation pane should open along the right side of the Meeting view.
Type your message into the field at the bottom of the conversation pane
Click on the send icon in the lower right corner of the conversation pane.
Note that all participants who are currently viewing the conversation pane will see your message immediately; participants who do not have the conversation pane active will see a red dot next to the Show conversation icon on the toolbar.
The 14th biennial conference of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas.
Registration Details
The single registration fee includes attendance at all tutorials and workshops, special student mentoring sessions, exhibitions by vendors and conference sponsors, and all presentations in the three conference tracks: Commercial, Research, and Government. Additionally, after each tutorial, workshop, and presentation, a recording will be available for viewing on demand during the conference week and for a period of weeks after the conference. Attendees will thus be able to enjoy all sessions and presentations even if they could not attend them at the time they were given.
The registration fee also includes a two-year membership in AMTA (a US$100 value for non-students and US$50 for students), which allows members to register for the upcoming MT Summit XVIII conference in 2021 as well as for conferences hosted by our sister organizations, EAMT and AAMT, at a discounted member rate.
Through the generous sponsorship of Microsoft, the first one hundred students who register for AMTA 2020 will pay a discounted fee of only US$10.
Early registration prices are available through Monday, September 28, 2020.
Late registration starts Tuesday, September 29, 2020 and will continue through the last day of the conference.
Program Details
Our engaging keynote talks will feature the following world-recognized experts in the development and application of machine translation from research, industry, and government:
Two student mentoring sessions will feature experts from research, industry, and government who will give brief opening presentations and then lead Q&A discussions on employment opportunities related to machine translation and on preparing for those opportunities. One mentoring session will be held in the late afternoon and the other will be held in parallel with another conference track in the morning to provide flexibility for students who may have scheduling conflicts but still wish to attend a live session.
The current conference program schedule is provided below. The program will start each day at 8am PDT (UTC-7) and end at 3pm PDT. On the main conference days, about 10 minutes before 8am, there will be a short welcome session, including a program overview. On Wednesday, one of the student mentoring sessions will take place at 3:15pm (PDT).
AMTA 2020 provides a unique opportunity for academic and commercial researchers to share their results with colleagues as well as to understand real-world user requirements. Business and government participants will benefit from updates on leading-edge R&D in Machine Translation and have a chance to present and discuss their use cases.
We look forward to “seeing” you at AMTA 2020 – VIRTUAL!
Steve Richardson
AMTA President
AMTA 2020 is pleased and grateful to recognize the generous contributions of the following sponsors:
New Submission Deadline: Monday, July 13, 2020 at 11:59pm (AOE).
The 14th biennial conference of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas.
While we have already received several submissions, we have noted that due to pandemic-related and other challenges, there are others who desire to submit but need additional time to do so. Consequently, we have decided to make a single extension of 12 days to our submission due date, which will now be Monday, July 13, 2020 at 11:59pm (AOE). All other dates will remain the same.
By the new date or before, we intend to open registration for the conference. We are currently finalizing the registration fee, but we now announce that there will be a single fee for the entire conference, which will include attendance at the tutorials and workshops scheduled for the first day of the conference (October 6).
The registration fee will also include a two-year membership in AMTA, which allows members to register for the upcoming MT Summit XVIII conference in 2021 as well as for conferences hosted by our sister organizations, EAMT and AAMT, at a discounted member rate.
We further announce that due to the generous sponsorship of Microsoft, the first one hundred students who register for AMTA 2020 will pay a significantly discounted fee of only US$10, and students whose papers are accepted in our Student Research Workshop will have their registration fee waved completely.
For academic and commercial researchers, AMTA 2020 provides a unique opportunity to share the latest results with colleagues as well as understand real-world user requirements. Business and government participants will benefit from updates on leading-edge R&D in Machine Translation and have a chance to present and discuss their use cases.
The virtual conference will continue to feature three main tracks – Research, Commercial, and Government, each dedicated to a respective area in machine translation research, commercial application, and government use. The Student Research Workshop will provide students an opportunity to present their work during sessions of the main conference.
The conference program will feature engaging keynote talks from these recognized experts in the research, development, and application of machine translation:
With the extended submission date, we encourage those who may have needed additional time to prepare the submissions to carefully note the following dates, which apply to each of the conference tracks listed below:
Submission deadline: Monday, 13 July 2020
Notification of acceptance: Monday, 3 August 2020
Final “camera-ready” versions: Monday, 31 August 2020
Main conference: 6-9 October 2020
The submission and “camera-ready” deadline time zone is “Anywhere on Earth” (UTC–12). Before the conference, the organizing committee will work with each presenter to ensure readiness for presenting in the virtual environment. By default, we expect presenters to give live presentations with an opportunity for questions and discussion at the end of each presentation. In certain cases, however, the committee may determine that pre-recording the presentation is a preferable option to ensure its quality. More information on acceptable modes of presentation will be forthcoming.
We look forward to “seeing” you at AMTA 2020 – VIRTUAL!
AMTA solicits original research papers that will advance the field of Machine Translation. In addition to regular contributions, we are also seeking extended abstracts that report in-progress work or novel applications of technology to real scenarios. Submissions must be unpublished and in English.
We seek submissions across the entire spectrum of MT-related research, but with a particular focus on AMTA’s strength: the close interaction between researchers and practitioners who are looking to apply the latest MT technology to their tasks. We particularly encourage submissions that are oriented towards building robust and practical systems, including user-in-the-loop translation systems, adaptation to particular domains or usage scenarios, and utilization of available resources in production scenarios.
Submission instructions:
Full papers must not exceed 12 (twelve) pages plus 2 (two) pages for references, and must be formatted according to the AMTA style guide: PDF version / LaTeX version / MS Word version. These papers will be rigorously reviewed for novelty and impact, and they will be published in the AMTA proceedings. They will be presented at the conference as either oral presentations or posters.
We will also be accepting submissions of extended abstracts of no more than 6 (six) pages plus 2 (two) pages for references. These abstracts can be used to report in-progress or late-breaking research results, analyses of the effects of applying research technology to practical application scenarios, or descriptions of demos appearing at the conference. Abstract submissions are further divided into two subcategories:
Original contributions, which will be included in the conference proceedings upon acceptance.
Non-archival submissions, which will not appear in the proceedings, but will still be presented at the conference.
Both types of abstracts will be double-blind reviewed for informativeness, correctness and clarity. They will be presented at the conference as posters. Abstracts should be anonymized, and should put “This is a submission to the [original / non-archival] extended abstract track.” at the end of the abstract field in the START submission page (it does not need to be noted in the paper itself).
Submitted papers must be in PDF. To allow for blind reviewing, please do not include author names and affiliations within the paper, and avoid obvious self-references. Papers must be submitted to the START system (https://www.softconf.com/amta2020/papers/) by the submission deadline listed above.
Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
Advances in various MT paradigms: data-driven, rule-based, and hybrids
MT applications and embedding: translation/localization aids, speech-to-speech, speech-to-text, OCR, MT for communication (chats, blogs, social networks), multilingual applications, etc.
Technologies for MT deployment: quality estimation and domain adaptation
MT in special settings: low resources, massive resources, high volume, low computing resources
Human factors in MT and user interfaces for MT
Linguistic resources for MT: dictionaries, terminology banks, corpora
MT evaluation techniques and evaluation results
Empirical studies on translation data
Multiple submissions:
Full papers and extended abstracts that will appear in the AMTA proceedings must represent new work that has not been previously published (pre-prints posted online on servers such as arXiv do not count as published papers, and thus are allowed to be submitted). It is the responsibility of the author(s) to inform the program chairs of any potential problem with respect to this requirement. Authors submitting a similar paper both to AMTA and another conference or workshop must inform the program chairs by email (mtresearchers@amtaweb.org), specifying to which other conference or workshop they are submitting their work. If a paper is accepted at both AMTA and another conference, then to appear at AMTA it can either be presented at AMTA as a full paper and withdrawn from the other conference, or it can be withdrawn from the AMTA proceedings, but still presented at AMTA as a non-archival extended abstract. Full papers presented at the conference and included in the proceedings will also be hosted on the ACL Anthology.
A Student Research Workshop will be held as part of the main AMTA 2020 conference and we invite submissions from students at all stages of their education.
The purpose of the Student Research Workshop is to provide students with a special opportunity to present their work and receive focused, intentional feedback from international experts in the field of machine translation. Accepted work will have at least one experienced member of the government, industry, and/or academia with knowledge in the student’s particular research area. These senior members will prepare comments and questions ahead of time and will work with the student to provide them with an outside perspective on their work’s impact and potential.
We invite two types of submissions:
Research papers must describe original, unpublished work, and follow the submission criteria described in the AMTA 2020 Call for MT Research Papers above. They may include multiple authors, but the primary and first author must be a student. These papers will be blindly reviewed and evaluated and then presented along with main conference papers. They will be published in the AMTA Student Research Workshop volume of the conference proceedings and hosted on the ACL Anthology.
Research proposals may contain previously published work. They should describe a proposed research trajectory, ideally (but optionally) rooted in the student’s existing work that is either already completed or in-progress. Research proposals must have only a single author.
Submissions:
All submitted papers must be in PDF. Papers must be submitted to the START system at https://www.softconf.com/amta2020/srw/ by submission deadline listed above.
For Research Papers please follow the submission guidelines found in the Call for MT Research Papers, noting the alternate submission URL above.
Research Proposals should be no longer than 5 (five) pages (not counting references, which have no page limit). Another page will be allowed for accepted papers.
Call for Presentations: Commercial MT Users and Translators:
The Commercial MT Users and Translators track will focus on how MT helps corporations, NGOs, Language Service Providers, and professional translators deliver products and services more effectively. Submissions should report on the use of MT and/or related tools, processes and technologies, to support business goals and serve customer needs in commercial settings. We welcome presentations from MT technology and service providers, but their presentations should not constitute a “sales pitch;” the focus should be on innovative MT technology, processes, and principles rather than on a particular product or offering.
Theme – Applying Innovation to Business Challenges
Producing ever-increasing volumes of multilingual content with constrained budgets has become a mantra for businesses entering global markets. These challenges are being met through the adoption of innovative technologies and tools, the automation of processes and workflows, and the application of artificial intelligence approaches.
The machine translation technology landscape is dotted with innovations in translation productivity tools, advancements in neural networks, and novel approaches to producing and delivering content to international audiences.
The goal of the commercial track is to provide a broad spectrum of machine translation applications to achieve the rapid delivery of multilingual content within the constraints of time, cost, scope and quality.
Topics of interest may include, but are not limited to, the following:
Making the business case for adopting MT to drive business requirements, expand markets and engage with customers.
Practical applications for using raw (aka stock) MT no human intervention, such as post editing.
Novel approaches to using MT in a commercial environment.
Advances in adaptive and interactive MT technologies.
Process and criteria for migrating to Neural MT from other systems, such as Statistical MT.
Using MT for leveraging between similar languages, such as Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Russian and Ukrainian, Spanish and Catalan; and language variants such as US to UK English, Brazilian to Continental Portuguese.
MT quality and confidence scoring, tools, and metrics that support business KPIs.
Productivity measures and quality frameworks that enhance business processes and translation workflows.
TM cleanup and corpus preparation techniques for engine training.
Approaches and challenges to building your own MT engines.
Quality vs. quantity and fit for purpose when choosing corpora for customizing engines (e.g. Translation Memories, terminology/glossaries, Do Not Translate lists).
MT Post Editing challenges.
New business applications for MT; for example, speech to speech, speech to text, videos, search and indexing applications, emergency response and disaster management, social media, chatbots.
API challenges such as tag handling and/or reordering.
Open Standards for machine translation
Overview and comparisons of open source MT tools and services.
Artificial Intelligence approaches to machine translation including Natural Language Processing or Machine Learning applications to enhance the translation process (e.g. information extraction and retrieval, text categorization, Named Entity Recognition, POS tagging, etc.).
Approaches and challenges to using MT for low-resource or long-tail languages.
Advances in domain adaptation.
Handling potentially offensive, illegal or profane language in MT output.
What to submit
Please submit a 250 to 500-word abstract describing the topic of your presentation by the submission deadline listed above to the Commercial MT Users Chairs (commercialmtusers@amtaweb.org). Address any questions to this email address. Presentations will describe how MT services, as well as complementary systems, technologies, tools and processes address specific business challenges. Submissions should not contain commercial solicitations of specific tools. If you have original software that you would like to show, you may also consider submitting a proposal to Exhibitions (more information coming soon).
Publication
Please indicate whether you intend to submit your presentation for publication in the AMTA 2020 Conference Proceedings. Although it is not a requirement, we strongly encourage you to make your presentation available in the Proceedings so that others can learn from your experiences. If you agree to have your presentation published in the Proceedings, you should format it according to the submission guidelines in the AMTA 2020 Call for MT Research Papers above. However, slide decks are also acceptable. Only abstracts are required to be submitted by the initial submission date, however, only papers and slide decks will be accepted by the final camera-ready date for publication in the Proceedings.
Call for Presentations: Government and Military MT Stakeholders
We invite you to submit a proposal to speak at AMTA 2020 about your insights on research, development and operational use of MT and MT-related technologies in government and military settings. We especially encourage perspectives that challenge the broader MT community, including issues with implementing and utilizing MT, whether on the technical side, the human side, or both.
Topics of interest:
1. MT as an operational tool for translation, analysis, information discovery.
2. MT for “non-standard” language in chats, blogs and social networks.
3. Evaluation of MT including estimation of ROI and human factors.
4. MT research and development in government and military settings.
5. Integration of MT into broader workflow, including case studies.
6. Linguistic resources for MT, especially those hard to find or create.
7. Neural MT opportunities and challenges.
8. MT in Humanitarian Assistance / Disaster Relief contexts.
9. Challenges, opportunities and insights into MT needs for the government and military.
Submissions:
Initial submissions should be abstracts 250-500 words in length. The following should accompany each abstract submission:
1. Presentation Title
2. Presenter Name
3. Representing Organization
4. Email Address
5. Phone Number
Please email your abstract to the Government/Military MT Stakeholders Chair (govtmtusers@amtaweb.org) by the submission deadline listed above.
If you have original software that you would like to show, you may also consider submitting a proposal to Exhibitions (more information coming soon).
Publication
While not mandatory, presenters are strongly encouraged to have their submissions published in the AMTA 2020 Proceedings, producing papers in accordance with the submission guidelines in the AMTA 2020 Call for MT Research Papers above. Slide decks may also be accepted. While only abstracts are required to be submitted by the initial submission date, only papers or slide decks will be accepted by the final camera-ready date for publication in the Proceedings.
The organizing committee of AMTA 2020 is seeking proposals for workshops and tutorials on all topics related to MT research, development, application, and evaluation. Our goal is to have a program of workshops and tutorials that appeals to the various constituents of AMTA (researchers, developers, commercial users, and language professionals). Therefore we welcome not only proposals on deeply technical research and development topics but also on, for instance, the collection and curation of training data, best practices in training MT systems, human/computer interaction among translators, interpreters, and other users of MT output, and the evolving role of translation automation in the commercial translation production pipeline.
Tutorials and Workshops will be held on Tuesday, 6 October 2020, immediately preceding the main conference, and Friday, 9 October 2020, immediately following the main conference. All tutorial presenters and workshop chairs will receive training on the conference’s virtual meeting platform.
Tutorials
Tutorials are a forum for experts in MT and MT-related areas to deliver concentrated training on a topic of interest in half-day teaching sessions. Tutorials help conference participants enrich their understanding of particular technical, applied, and business matters surrounding research, development and use of MT and associated technologies, or, in the case of tutorials designed for newcomers, provide background information that facilitates greater understanding of the overall conference program.
Because of the unusual circumstances of this conference, every effort will be made to accept or reject (with reason) tutorial proposals as soon as possible after they are received by the organizing committee.
Proposals for tutorials should be submitted by the submission deadline listed above, to tutorials@amtaweb.org and include:
The title
a 250-500 word description of the proposed content
AMTA workshops are intended to provide the opportunity for MT-related communities of interest to spend focused time together advancing the state of thinking or the state of practice in their area of interest or endeavor. Workshops are generally scheduled as a full-day event.
Because of the unusual circumstances of this conference, every effort will be made to accept or reject (with reason) workshop proposals as soon as possible after they are received by the organizing committee.
Workshop proposals should be submitted by the submission deadline listed above, to workshops@amtaweb.org and include:
the title
a 250-500 word description of the proposed content
whether this is an ongoing or new workshop
the expected number of participants
dates for important milestones (call for papers, recruitment of speakers, etc.)
Machine Translation is here to stay. For many years, MT has seen advances in the quality of output, the number of users, language pair and domain coverage, as well as the number of enterprises investing in MT. MT is now an integral part of most CAT tools and post-editing is a de facto task required from language professionals in many domains. The introduction and wide-scale adoption of NMT has boosted this even more. Languages and domains that were not supported previously are now serious contenders for MT, at least for gisting, if not for more. As MT becomes more and more mainstream, an increasing number of people are interacting with it, for a variety of purposes, even beyond the commercial language industry. The 2020 AMTA conference is therefore an excellent moment in time to take stock of the nature of this interaction, the impact to date and the potential impact into the future.
Building on the success of past workshops that address post-editing, such as the ones held at AMTA 2018 and MT Summit 2019, we present PEMDT1. Like its predecessors, this workshop will bring together post-editing translation tool users (practitioners) and researchers to compare and contrast how each use digital technology for translation. Specifically, the workshop focuses on novel advances in modern-day Computer-Assisted Tools (CAT) such as, but not limited to, Automatic Post-Editing (APE), Neural Machine Translation (NMT), and post-editing techniques and their usefulness as components in a practitioner’s workflow. The workshop’s aim is to gain a modern-day outlook on tools and the latest research in the post-editing sector. There will be open discussion amongst attendees along with invited speakers with an attempt to discern what is best for the post-editing field.
For those already familiar with our conference systems, Swapcard and Microsoft Teams, we provide the following guide to quickly access our conference sessions. However, we do recommend that you also look over the Introduction for Attendees document as well, so that you don’t overlook something. First, a brief reminder about conference etiquette: Please be mindful […]
Welcome to AMTA 2020! The organizing committee of AMTA 2020 is very happy to welcome you to the conference. We are pleased to present a pre-conference day of workshops and tutorials followed by the main conference, which features six keynote talks and many interesting sessions in the Commercial, Research, and Government tracks spread over three […]
AMTA 2020 – VIRTUAL October 6-9 The 14th biennial conference of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas. Registration Details The single registration fee includes attendance at all tutorials and workshops, special student mentoring sessions, exhibitions by vendors and conference sponsors, and all presentations in the three conference tracks: Commercial, Research, and Government. Additionally, […]
AMTA 2020 – VIRTUAL October 6-9 New Submission Deadline: Monday, July 13, 2020 at 11:59pm (AOE). The 14th biennial conference of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas. While we have already received several submissions, we have noted that due to pandemic-related and other challenges, there are others who desire to submit but need […]
Machine Translation is here to stay. For many years, MT has seen advances in the quality of output, the number of users, language pair and domain coverage, as well as the number of enterprises investing in MT. MT is now an integral part of most CAT tools and post-editing is a de facto task required […]
Building on the success of past workshops that address post-editing, such as the ones held at AMTA 2018 and MT Summit 2019, we present PEMDT1. Like its predecessors, this workshop will bring together post-editing translation tool users (practitioners) and researchers to compare and contrast how each use digital technology for translation. Specifically, the workshop focuses […]
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