The 18th biennial conference of the International Association of Machine Translation
16-20 August 2021, Orlando, Florida, USA
We are pleased to distribute the 2nd call for papers and presentations, as well as for proposals for Workshops and Tutorials, for MT Summit XVIII, the 18th Machine Translation Summit, to be held 16-20 August 2021. The conference is set to take place at a spectacular venue located just outside the Disney theme parks, the Sheraton Orlando Lake Buena Vista Resort in Orlando, Florida, USA. We also plan to provide registration options for remote viewing of conference presentations, and we will continue to monitor the pandemic situation closely, converting to a completely virtual format if needed to ensure the safety of participants.
This year’s conference is organized by the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas. The biennial MT Summit brings together the American (AMTA), Asian-Pacific (AAMT) and European (EAMT) branches of the International Association for Machine Translation (IAMT), creating an invaluable opportunity to discuss the issues of the day with a truly global gathering of MT researchers, developers, providers, and users. For academic, student, and commercial researchers, MT Summit XVIII provides a unique context in which to share the latest results with colleagues as well as understand real-world user requirements. MT providers and users in both business and government settings will benefit from updates on leading-edge R&D in Machine Translation and have a chance to present and discuss their use cases. In all these contexts, we strongly encourage student submissions and participation as well.
Special Opportunity for Students
Students who register for the conference will have the opportunity to be paired with mentors to discuss career goals, aspirations, experiences, and recommendations. Repeating the very successful student mentoring sessions held at the AMTA 2020 conference last October, experts in Machine Translation across Academia, Industry, and Government have volunteered to lead small group sessions where students can ask questions and get exposure to the details of possible MT-related career paths. These opportunities are available to all students who attend the conference, regardless of background or experience.
Survey Opportunity on MT Trends
One of the keynotes at the MT Summit will review the results of a survey conducted by CSA Research on MT Trends. We invite representatives from all commercial and government organizations, as well as LSPs and individual freelancers, to participate in this survey about how you and/or your business uses MT technology. Participants will receive the survey results, allowing them to benchmark themselves against their peers. The deadline to participate is April 9, 2021. Please help us collect data that will be meaningful and valuable to the entire MT community by taking this survey.
Conference Tracks
The conference will feature three main tracks – Research, Users and Providers, and Government, each dedicated to a respective area in machine translation research, commercial application, and government use.
The following important dates apply to each of the tracks:
Submission deadline: Monday, 10 May 2021
Notification of acceptance: Monday, 21 June 2021
Final “camera-ready” versions: Monday, 12 July 2021
Please note the earlier deadline for submission of Workshop proposals: Monday, 12 April 2021
The submission and “camera-ready” deadline time zone for all the above dates is “Anywhere on Earth” (UTC–12).
IMPORTANT NOTE: Due to the hybrid nature of the conference, all papers, presentations, tutorials, and workshops will be recorded without exception. Any submission will be understood by the MT Summit Organizing Committee as giving your tacit permission for the organizers to create a video recording of your presentation and make it available to conference attendees, and potentially to members of AMTA, AAMT, or EAMT as well. Depending on the final format of the conference, we may also request that presentations be pre-recorded.
Guidelines for submission to the tracks of the conference are as follows:
We invite original, substantial, and unpublished research in all aspects of machine translation (MT). We seek submissions across the entire spectrum of MT-related research, but with a particular focus on MT Summit’s strength: the close interaction between researchers and practitioners who are looking to apply the latest MT technology to their tasks. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
Advances in data-driven MT (e.g. neural, statistical)
Lexicon acquisition and integration into MT
MT for low resource languages
Model distillation, compression, and on-device MT
MT in production scenarios, robustness and deployment issues.
MT for multiple modalities (Speech, OCR)
MT for communication (chats, blogs, social networks)
Few-shot adaptation of pre-trained MT systems
Deep integration of MT technology within translation and localization pipelines
Large-scale mining of translation resources
Computer Assisted Translation (CAT)
MT Evaluation
Measuring Fairness, Bias, Transparency in Translation
Detecting and preventing Catastrophic errors in Translation
Best practices in annotation for Translation
Submission Instructions:
Papers should not be longer than 10 pages of content (for references, unlimited number of pages is allowed). The papers must be submitted in PDF format and adhere to one of the following style guides: PDF version, LaTeX version, MS Word version. To allow for blind reviewing, please do not include author names and affiliations within the paper and avoid obvious self-references. Research track papers 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; we do not require a 1-month anonymity period for previous submissions on arXiv). Authors submitting a similar paper to another conference or workshop must specify this at submission time; if the paper is accepted to multiple venues, the author must choose which one to present at. Papers must be submitted to the following website by the conference submission deadline: https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/MTSUMMIT2021.
Publication
Final versions of papers must be submitted by the final “camera-ready” date. All Research track papers will be included in the conference proceedings, which will be made publicly available on the MT Summit website after the conference. Papers will also be hosted individually on the ACL Anthology website.
This track is intended for users, providers, and developers of machine translation, as well as professional translators and Language Service Providers, to present novel, original, and unpublished applications of machine translation technology or specific use cases.
We seek submissions for 30-minute presentations, which will include several minutes for questions and discussion, concerning the use of MT and/or related tools, processes, and technologies to support business goals and serve the customer or user in commercial settings.
Topics of interest may include, but are not limited to, the following:
Preparing data for MT training and customization: extraction, alignment, and cleaning of corpora, terminology, DNT and abbreviations, data augmentation, metadata extraction, working with data drift.
Advanced techniques of training and domain adaptation of MT engines: open frameworks and commercial Custom MT platforms, approaches to analyze and improve training performance.
Applying MT for low-resource or otherwise special circumstances: low resource language pairs, cross-dialect and cross-domain translation.
Evaluation of MT systems with respect to available reference data, technical and linguistic requirements.
MT quality and confidence scoring: tools and metrics that identify risk, support business KPIs and estimate ROI.
Advanced MT fine-tuning and enhancement, including pre- and post-processing, controlling style, tone of voice, gender, pseudonymization, automated post-editing and others.
Interactive and real-time adaptive MT systems, including advanced approaches to leverage TM and end-user feedback.
MT Post-Editing: switching from HT to MTPE, success and failure stories, applicability to different content-types, MTPE training, defining fair pricing models and working with translation buyers and providers.
Technical challenges in MT adoption: file format and tag support, integration, security, performance, data protection, locality and compliance.
MT Case Studies: making the business case for adopting MT to drive business requirements, expand markets and engage with customers. Post-edited MT, real-time MT, cross-language information retrieval.
Augmenting MT with other AI tools to solve complex business problems: classification, content moderation, sentiment analysis, OCR, STT and TTS.
Source text improvement: improving the source content for MT, both through automatic tools such as grammar correction and guidelines.
Submission Instructions
Please submit a 250 to 500-word abstract describing your presentation topic to the MT Users and Providers Chairs (mtusers-providers@amtaweb.org) by the conference submission deadline. The submission should include a 100-words-or-less biographical description of the proposed speaker(s). 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 real-world use cases, rather than on a particular product or offering.
Publication
Presentations in the form of slide decks are acceptable submissions and should be in PDF format. Papers are welcomed, as they typically provide a greater level of detail and understanding to conference attendees. If submitted, papers should be formatted according to the guidelines under Submission Instructions for the Research Track (see above) . Only abstracts are required to be submitted by the initial submission deadline. Papers and slide decks must be submitted by the final “camera-ready” date for publication in the conference proceedings and on the ACL Anthology website.
We invite MT practitioners involved with governments worldwide to submit proposals for presentations 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 include, but are not limited to:
MT as an operational tool for translation, analysis, information discovery.
MT for “non-standard” language in chats, blogs and social networks.
Evaluation of MT including estimation of ROI and human factors.
MT research and development in government and military settings.
Integration of MT into broader workflow, including case studies.
Linguistic resources for MT, especially those hard to find or create.
Neural MT opportunities and challenges.
MT in Humanitarian Assistance / Disaster Relief contexts.
Challenges, opportunities and insights into MT needs for the government and military.
Submission Instructions
Initial submissions should be abstracts 250-500 words in length. The following should accompany each abstract submission:
1. Presentation Title
2. Presenter Name, including a short bio (<100 words)
3. Representing Organization
4. Email Address
5. Phone Number
Please email your abstract to the Government Track Chairs (govtmtusers@amtaweb.org) by the conference submission deadline.
Publication
While not mandatory, presenters are strongly encouraged to have their submissions published in the conference proceedings, producing papers in accordance with the guidelines under Submission Instructions for the Research Track (see above). Slide decks may also be accepted. While only abstracts are required to be submitted by the initial submission deadline, papers and/or slide decks must be submitted by the final camera-ready date for publication in the conference proceedings and on the ACL Anthology website.
The organizing committee of MT Summit XVIII 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 the MT community (researchers, developers, students, 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 Monday, August 16, immediately preceding the main conference, and Friday, August 20, immediately following the main conference.
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.
Proposals for tutorials should be sent by the conference submission deadline to tutorials@amtaweb.organdinclude:
the title
a 250-500 word description of the proposed content
a short (<100 words) biographical introduction to the proposed presenter(s)
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 typically scheduled as full-day events.
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 so that the workshop organizers have adequate time to prepare the workshop.
We encourage you to submit your proposals for workshops as early as possible to workshops@amtaweb.organdinclude:
the title
a 250-500 word description of the proposed content
whether this is an ongoing or new workshop
a short (<100 words) biographical introduction to the proposed presenter(s)
the expected number of participants
dates for important milestones (call for papers, recruitment of speakers, etc.)
Workshop proposals should be submitted no later than Monday, 12 April 2021.Please note that this date is one month earlier than the deadline for other papers and presentations at MT Summit XVIII.
We look forward to receiving your proposal!
MT Summit XVIII – 2021
The 18th biennial conference of the International Association of Machine Translation
16-20 August 2021, Orlando, Florida, USA
We are pleased to announce the call for papers and presentations, as well as for proposals for Workshops and Tutorials, for MT Summit XVIII, the 18th Machine Translation Summit, to be held 16-20 August 2021. The conference is set to take place at a spectacular venue located just outside the Disney theme parks, the Sheraton Orlando Lake Buena Vista Resort in Orlando, Florida, USA. We also plan to provide registration options for remote viewing of conference presentations, and we will continue to monitor the pandemic situation closely, converting to a completely virtual format if needed to ensure the safety of participants.
This year’s conference is organized by the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas. The biennial MT Summit brings together the American (AMTA), Asian-Pacific (AAMT) and European (EAMT) branches of the International Association for Machine Translation (IAMT), creating an invaluable opportunity to discuss the issues of the day with a truly global gathering of MT researchers, developers, providers, and users. For academic, student, and commercial researchers, MT Summit XVIII provides a unique context in which to share the latest results with colleagues as well as understand real-world user requirements. MT providers and users in both business and government settings will benefit from updates on leading-edge R&D in Machine Translation and have a chance to present and discuss their use cases. In all these contexts, we strongly encourage student submissions and participation as well.
The following important dates apply to each of the tracks listed below:
Submission deadline:
Monday, 10 May 2021
Notification of acceptance:
Monday, 21 June 2021
Final “camera-ready” versions:
Monday, 12 July 2021
Please note the earlier deadline for submission of Workshop proposals: Monday, 12 April 2021
The submission and “camera-ready” deadline time zone for all of the above dates is “Anywhere on Earth” (UTC–12).
IMPORTANT NOTE: Due to the hybrid nature of the conference, all papers, presentations, tutorials, and workshops will be recorded without exception. Any submission will be understood by the MT Summit Organizing Committee as giving your tacit permission for the organizers to create a video recording of your presentation and make it available to conference attendees, and potentially to members of AMTA, AAMT, or EAMT as well. Depending on the final format of the conference, we may also request that presentations be pre-recorded.
Conference Tracks
The conference will feature three main tracks – Research, Users and Providers, and Government, each dedicated to a respective area in machine translation research, commercial application, and government use.
Guidelines for submission to the tracks of the conference are as follows:
We invite original, substantial, and unpublished research in all aspects of machine translation (MT). We seek submissions across the entire spectrum of MT-related research, but with a particular focus on MT Summit’s strength: the close interaction between researchers and practitioners who are looking to apply the latest MT technology to their tasks. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
Advances in data-driven MT (e.g. neural, statistical)
Lexicon acquisition and integration into MT
MT for low resource languages
Model distillation, compression, and on-device MT
MT in production scenarios, robustness and deployment issues.
MT for multiple modalities (Speech, OCR)
MT for communication (chats, blogs, social networks)
Few-shot adaptation of pre-trained MT systems
Deep integration of MT technology within translation and localization pipelines
Large-scale mining of translation resources
Computer Assisted Translation (CAT)
MT Evaluation
Measuring Fairness, Bias, Transparency in Translation
Detecting and preventing Catastrophic errors in Translation
Best practices in annotation for Translation
Submission Instructions:
Papers should not be longer than 10 pages of content (for references, unlimited number of pages is allowed). The papers must follow the AMTA 2020 style guides (PDF version, LaTeX version, MS Word version) and be submitted in PDF format. To allow for blind reviewing, please do not include author names and affiliations within the paper and avoid obvious self-references. Research track papers 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; we do not require a 1-month anonymity period for previous submissions on arXiv). Authors submitting a similar paper to another conference or workshop must specify this at submission time; if the paper is accepted to multiple venues, the author must choose which one to present at. Papers must be submitted to the following website by the conference submission deadline: https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/MTSUMMIT2021.
Publication
Final versions of papers must be submitted by the final “camera-ready” date. All Research track papers will be included in the conference proceedings, which will be made publicly available on the MT Summit website after the conference. Papers will also be hosted individually on the ACL Anthology website.
This track is intended for users, providers, and developers of machine translation, as well as professional translators and Language Service Providers, to present novel, original, and unpublished applications of machine translation technology or specific use cases.
We seek submissions for 30-minute presentations, which will include several minutes for questions and discussion, concerning the use of MT and/or related tools, processes, and technologies to support business goals and serve the customer or user in commercial settings.
Topics of interest may include, but are not limited to, the following:
Preparing data for MT training and customization: extraction, alignment, and cleaning of corpora, terminology, DNT and abbreviations, data augmentation, metadata extraction, working with data drift.
Advanced techniques of training and domain adaptation of MT engines: open frameworks and commercial Custom MT platforms, approaches to analyze and improve training performance.
Applying MT for low-resource or otherwise special circumstances: low resource language pairs, cross-dialect and cross-domain translation.
Evaluation of MT systems with respect to available reference data, technical and linguistic requirements.
MT quality and confidence scoring: tools and metrics that identify risk, support business KPIs and estimate ROI.
Advanced MT fine-tuning and enhancement, including pre- and post-processing, controlling style, tone of voice, gender, pseudonymization, automated post-editing and others.
Interactive and real-time adaptive MT systems, including advanced approaches to leverage TM and end-user feedback.
MT Post-Editing: switching from HT to MTPE, success and failure stories, applicability to different content-types, MTPE training, defining fair pricing models and working with translation buyers and providers.
Technical challenges in MT adoption: file format and tag support, integration, security, performance, data protection, locality and compliance.
MT Case Studies: making the business case for adopting MT to drive business requirements, expand markets and engage with customers. Post-edited MT, real-time MT, cross-language information retrieval.
Augmenting MT with other AI tools to solve complex business problems: classification, content moderation, sentiment analysis, OCR, STT and TTS.
Source text improvement: improving the source content for MT, both through automatic tools such as grammar correction and guidelines.
Submission Instructions
Please submit a 250 to 500-word abstract describing your presentation topic to the MT Users and Providers Chairs (mtusers-providers@amtaweb.org) by the conference submission deadline. The submission should include a 100-words-or-less biographical description of the proposed speaker(s). 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 real-world use cases, rather than on a particular product or offering.
Publication
Presentations in the form of slide decks are acceptable submissions and should be in PDF format. Papers are welcomed, as they typically provide a greater level of detail and understanding to conference attendees. If submitted, papers should be formatted according to the guidelines under Submission Instructions for the Research Track (see above) . Only abstracts are required to be submitted by the initial submission deadline. Papers and slide decks must be submitted by the final “camera-ready” date for publication in the conference proceedings and on the ACL Anthology website.
We invite MT practitioners involved with governments worldwide to submit proposals for presentations 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 include, but are not limited to:
MT as an operational tool for translation, analysis, information discovery.
MT for “non-standard” language in chats, blogs and social networks.
Evaluation of MT including estimation of ROI and human factors.
MT research and development in government and military settings.
Integration of MT into broader workflow, including case studies.
Linguistic resources for MT, especially those hard to find or create.
Neural MT opportunities and challenges.
MT in Humanitarian Assistance / Disaster Relief contexts.
Challenges, opportunities and insights into MT needs for the government and military.
Submission Instructions
Initial submissions should be abstracts 250-500 words in length. The following should accompany each abstract submission:
1. Presentation Title
2. Presenter Name, including a short bio (<100 words)
3. Representing Organization
4. Email Address
5. Phone Number
Please email your abstract to the Government Track Chairs (govtmtusers@amtaweb.org) by the conference submission deadline.
Publication
While not mandatory, presenters are strongly encouraged to have their submissions published in the conference proceedings, producing papers in accordance with the guidelines under Submission Instructions for the Research Track (see above). Slide decks may also be accepted. While only abstracts are required to be submitted by the initial submission deadline, papers and/or slide decks must be submitted by the final camera-ready date for publication in the conference proceedings and on the ACL Anthology website.
The organizing committee of MT Summit XVIII 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 the MT community (researchers, developers, students, 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 Monday, August 16, immediately preceding the main conference, and Friday, August 20, immediately following the main conference.
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.
Proposals for tutorials should be sent by the conference submission deadline to tutorials@amtaweb.org and include:
the title
a 250-500 word description of the proposed content
a short (<100 words) biographical introduction to the proposed presenter(s)
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 typically scheduled as full-day events.
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 so that the workshop organizers have adequate time to prepare the workshop.
We encourage you to submit your proposals for workshops as early as possible 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
a short (<100 words) biographical introduction to the proposed presenter(s)
the expected number of participants
dates for important milestones (call for papers, recruitment of speakers, etc.)
Workshop proposals should be submitted no later than Monday, 12 April 2021.Please note that this date is one month earlier than the deadline for other papers and presentations at MT Summit XVIII. We look forward to receiving your proposal!
Keynotes Colin Cherry – Google Research Research Keynote | Research stories from Google Translate’s Transcribe Mode Download (1.1 MB)
Mona Diab – George Washington University Research Keynote | Faithful NLG in an era of Ethical Awareness: Opportunities for MT Download (1.6 MB)
Eric Paquin – Translators Without Borders Commercial Keynote | Using language technology to enable two-way communication in humanitarian assistance Download (2.3 MB)
Danielle Silverman – U.S. Department of Defense Government Keynote | Navigating Change: Keys to implementing language technology in government Download (0.5 MB)
Andy Way – ADAPT Centre, Dublin City University Government Keynote | MT Developments in the European Union Download (3.4 MB)
Chris Wendt – Microsoft Research Commercial Keynote | Factor 1000: Better MT, more content, and what we can do with it Download (1.4 MB)
Workshops The Impact of Machine Translation (iMpacT 2020) Download (10.4 MB)
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:
MT Summit XVIII – 2021 The 18th biennial conference of the International Association of Machine Translation 16-20 August 2021, Orlando, Florida, USA We are pleased to distribute the 2nd call for papers and presentations, as well as for proposals for Workshops and Tutorials, for MT Summit XVIII, the 18th Machine Translation Summit, to be held […]
MT Summit XVIII – 2021 The 18th biennial conference of the International Association of Machine Translation 16-20 August 2021, Orlando, Florida, USA We are pleased to announce the call for papers and presentations, as well as for proposals for Workshops and Tutorials, for MT Summit XVIII, the 18th Machine Translation Summit, to be held 16-20 […]
Main ConferenceResearch TrackDownload (3.8 MB) Commercial and Government TracksDownload (23.3 MB) KeynotesColin Cherry – Google ResearchResearch Keynote | Research stories from Google Translate’s Transcribe ModeDownload (1.1 MB) Mona Diab – George Washington UniversityResearch Keynote | Faithful NLG in an era of Ethical Awareness:Opportunities for MTDownload (1.6 MB) Eric Paquin – Translators Without BordersCommercial Keynote | […]
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, […]
)at the top of the chat pane.
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