February 2026 - Corpora

Second call for paper: BriGap-3, Bridges and Gaps between Formal and Computational Linguistics
by Timothée Bernard 19 Feb '26

19 Feb '26

*Second call for paper: BriGap-3, Bridges and Gaps between Formal and Computational Linguistics* (with our apologies for cross-posting) Venue: Université Paris Cité, campus des Grands moulins, *Paris, France* Date: *July 11th, 2026* Event website: https://brigap-workshop.github.io/ *BriGap-3 is a venue for formal linguists, computational linguists, and NLP scientists to meet: what fruitful interactions can we have? How do we build upon each other’s work?* ** Context ** Due to the groundbreaking achievements of the last decade, the ongoing discourse in NLP has shifted more to what can be achieved through language than studying language for its own sake, and traditional conferences are increasingly dominated by engineering-oriented work. It could thus appear that computational and formal linguistics are more than ever separate domains. Yet, we are also witnessing a growing interest in linguistics in both explaining the successes of neural models and uncovering their limitations. Conversely, all kinds of computational methods have proven their usefulness for linguistics time and again. To what extent are these traditions truly divorced, and what fruitful bridges can be (re)built? To answer these questions, the third iteration of the workshop on Bridges and Gaps between Formal and Computational Linguistics (BriGap-3) intends to provide a space for formal linguists, computational linguists, and NLP scientists to exchange their perspectives on how their different domains of research can build upon one another. ** Event topics ** - investigation of the linguistic properties of machine learning models, - linguistic representations, vector space semantics, and their relations with theoretical concepts such as compositionality, - use of computational and information-theoretical methods for linguistic inquiry, - formal distributional semantics and neural-symbolic integration for NLP, - formal grammars, symbolic structures and their applications for computational linguistics and NLP, - trends in the history of computational linguistics and NLP, - … ** Invited speakers ** - *Raquel FERNÁNDEZ*, Universiteit van Amsterdam - *Tal LINZEN*, New York University (online) ** Submission details ** The event is designed with a widely inclusive submission policy so as to foster as vibrant a discussion as possible. In particular, we will accept: - Archival submissions, corresponding to novel and unpublished research, to be included in the event proceedings, - Non-archival submissions, corresponding to work in progress, early results, and articles presented in other venues that engage with the topics of the event. The event accepts both archival (original and unpublished research) submissions in either short (up to 4 pages) or long (up to 8 pages) format, and non-archival (work-in-progress, dissemination of research published or accepted elsewhere, etc.) submissions in short (up to 4 pages) format. Camera-ready versions of papers will be given one additional page of content so that reviewers’ comments can be taken into account. Each submission should mention whether it targets archival or non-archival status. Archival papers accepted at BriGap-3 will be indexed in the ACL Anthology. Please use the ACL style templates available here: https://github.com/acl-org/acl-style-files Submission link: https://openreview.net/group?id=BriGap/2026/Workshop Please be aware that to submit on OpenReview, you need an OpenReview profile, and that the activation process might take up to two weeks (in case you do not use an institutional email). While it is often syntactically correct and coherent to some extent, the text produced by current generative AI systems falls below our expectations in terms of depth, clarity, and precision. Conceptual clarity and argumentation will be key criteria in the evaluation of submissions. We therefore *strongly* discourage the use of AI systems. In addition, the detection of any hallucinations in a submission (whether in the bibliography or elsewhere) will lead to rejection, regardless of the other qualities of the text. ** Important dates *- Submission deadline: Monday, April 27th, 2026* (23:59 AoE) - Notification of acceptance: Monday, May 11th 2026 - Event: Saturday, July 11th, 2026 ** Contact ** For questions, please send an email to brigapworkshop(a)gmail.com or contact one of the event chairs: - Timothée Bernard, Université Paris Cité - Emmanuele Chersoni, Hong Kong Polytechnic University - Giulia Rambelli, Università di Bologna

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Deadline-extension-SPEAKABLE 2026 @ LREC 2026
by Davide LIGA 19 Feb '26

19 Feb '26

***APOLOGIES FOR CROSS-POSTING*** 🚨 Due to several email requests --> Deadline got extended.🚨 Location: Palau de Congressos de Palma, Palma de Mallorca (Spain) Website: https://speakable-2026.github.io/ We are pleased to announce the upcoming full-day SPEAKABLE 2026 Workshop on Speech Language Models in Low-Resource Settings: Performance, Evaluation, and Bias Analysis, co-located with LREC 2026 in Palma de Mallorca. This workshop brings together researchers, practitioners, and industry experts working to advance speech technology for under-resourced languages. We invite contributions that address the unique challenges and opportunities in this space. Workshop Topics of Interest We encourage submissions on (but not limited to): - Performance of speech language models in low-resource and underrepresented languages - Evaluation methodologies and creation of benchmarks for low-resource speech - Bias analysis, detection, and mitigation strategies in speech technologies - Real-world applications, deployment challenges, and case studies - Speech recognition, speech-to-text, language modeling, multilingual and cross-lingual approaches - Fairness, ethical considerations, and inclusive NLP for low-resource speech communities - Parameter-efficient adaptation methods and knowledge distillation for speech models - Edge-constrained inference and computational efficiency in low-resource settings --> SPEAKABLE will only accept direct submissions through the given Submission link: https://softconf.com/lrec2026/SPEAKABLE2026/<https://softconf.com/lrec2026/SPEAKABLE2026/login/scmd.cgi?scmd=logout> Invited Speaker Dr. Jordi Luque (Lead Research Scientist, Telefónica Research): https://eloquenceai.eu/imprint/ Further details will be posted on the workshop website. Info for Papers We welcome original research papers and ongoing work relevant to speech and language modeling for low-resource settings. Submissions should be 4 to 8 pages in length and follow the LREC 2026 stylesheet. Submissions should follow LREC formatting guidelines (https://lrec2026.info/authors-kit/). The maximum number of pages excludes potential Ethics Statements and discussion on Limitations, acknowledgements, and references, as well as data and code availability statements. Appendices or supplementary material are not permitted during the initial submission phase, as papers should be self-contained and reviewable on their own. Submissions will be judged on correctness, originality, technical strength, significance, relevance to the conference, and interest to the attendees. Papers must be of original, previously unpublished work. All submissions should follow the two-column LREC style guidelines. We strongly recommend the use of the LaTeX/Overleaf style files. All papers will undergo a double-blind peer review process, with final acceptance decisions made by the workshop chairs. Submissions that violate the requirements above will be rejected without review. Accepted papers will be presented as oral or poster presentations. The mode of presentation will be determined by the workshop chairs and does not reflect the quality of the submission. SPEAKABLE 2026 will primarily be an in-person event, but online participation will also be possible for participants who cannot travel to the conference. Important Dates Paper Submission Deadline: February 26, 2026 (Extended deadline) Workshop Date: May 2026 (11/05/2026) All deadlines are anywhere-on-earth (AoE). Workshop Organizers Nina Hosseini-Kivanani (RTL & University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg) Alessio Brutti (Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy) Marco Matassoni (Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy) Sandipana Dowerah (Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia) Davide Liga (University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg) Christoph Schommer (University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg) Learn more and submit: https://speakable-2026.github.io/ For questions, contact: speakable2026(a)gmail.com<mailto:speakable2026@gmail.com>

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Job@ELDA: Junior Project Manager position, specialised in NLP (permanent position)
by info＠elda.org 19 Feb '26

19 Feb '26

[Apologies for multiple postings] The Evaluations and Language Resources Distribution Agency (ELDA), a company specialized in Human Language Technologies within an international context, is currently seeking to fill an immediate vacancy for a permanent Junior Project Manager position, specialised in Natural Language Processing. Job description The Junior Project Manager will conduct the activities related to the production of language resources and the co-ordination of national and European R&D projects, under the supervision of a Senior Project Manager. Their responsibilities include the recruitment and management of project-dedicated team members, as well as the design/specification and quality control of the language resources produced within the projects. They will also contribute to improve or update the current language resources production workflows, particularly in terms of human resources, time management and budgets. This yields excellent opportunities for motivated, creative candidates willing to improve their experience and actively participate in the Language Technologies field. The position is based in Paris (13th). Salary: Commensurate with qualifications and experience (between 28-38K€). Other benefits: complementary health insurance and meal vouchers. Required profile * Master’s degree in NLP, Linguistics or General Management with a liking for language technologies and AI. * Strong organizational skills and ability to supervise members of a multidisciplinary team. Proficiency in organizational tools is required (e.g. ASANA, currently used at ELDA); familiarity with or proposals for other tools (e.g. Jira, Confluence or Notion) would be a plus. * Strong skills in office tools (in particular Word, PowerPoint, Excel). * Ability to experiment with various techniques or tools related to language technology (e.g. annotation or transcription tools). * Dynamic and communicative, flexible to work on multiple tasks * Proficiency in English with ability to write administration documentation, deliverables and reports, and good mastering of French. Knowledge of any other European language would be a strong plus. * Citizenship (or residency papers) of a European Union country. About ELDA is an SME established in 1995 to promote the development and exploitation of Language Resources (LRs). Language Resources include all data necessary for language engineering, such as monolingual and multilingual lexica, text corpora, speech databases, and terminology. ELDA’s role is to produce LRs, to collect, to validate, and, foremost, to make them available to users in compliance with applicable regulations and ethical requirements. For further information about ELDA, visit: https://fr.linkedin.com/company/elda <https://fr.linkedin.com/company/elda> Applicants should email a cover letter addressing the points listed above together with a curriculum vitae to: *ELDA* *9 rue des Cordelières* *75013 Paris* *FRANCE* *Email: _job(a)elda.org_ *

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Extended Deadline: LREC 2026 Workshop on Learning Non-Literal Expressions with Small Data (NLE 2026)
by Valia Kordoni 19 Feb '26

19 Feb '26

Dear all, due to numerous requests we are extending the submission period for NLE2026@LREC 2026 to Monday, 02 March. See below for the updated Call for Papers: **NEW** Submission deadline: 02 March 2026 Workshop on Learning Non-Literal Expressions with Small Data (NLE 2026) To be held in conjunction with LREC 2026, Palma de Mallorca, Spain on 11 May 2026. Website: https://sites.google.com/view/nle2026/home Overview Non-Literal Expressions (NLEs) in natural language are a reflection of fundamental cognitive processes such as analogical reasoning and categorisation, and are deeply rooted in everyday communication. NLEs understanding is therefore an essential task for language modeling. This task is especially challenging because it cannot be tackled by falling back on individual word meanings, but requires taking into account larger chunks of surrounding text or even contextual information. At the same time, it is important because the reliable processing of NLEs is relevant for optimizing downstream tasks like translation and summarization. This workshop focuses on understanding of Non-Literal Expressions. While most of the earlier work on NLEs had been devoted to metaphor and metonymy, recent activities target other forms of NLEs as well, e.g., hyperbole (deliberate exaggeration), litotes (understatement), rhetorical questions, and irony. Humanly annotated corpora for NLEs have very recently started becoming available to the research community and may serve as the basis for data-driven approaches to NLEs processing, with the interrelated goals of first identifying and then interpreting such expressions. Such data is mostly of high linguistic quality, but still very limited in size. Thus, the workshop's focus is on adaptation of Language Models (LMs) and Deep Learning (DL) for processing of Non-Literal Expressions with limited high-quality data, since such constructs still pose big identification and processing challenges in natural language analysis tasks. Topics of Interest We are interested in contributions which focus on the use of techniques like self-training for leveraging unlabelled data, as well as in work that focuses on the incorporation of external linguistic resources and knowledge injection to enrich features, and also in research that describes work on utilisation of multitask learning with the aim to benefit from related tasks. The workshop also wants to discuss alternative approaches which may elaborate on the use of pre-trained Language Models (LMs) as a foundation and the application of techniques like contrastive learning and clustering to identify challenging examples within the data, the ultimate aim of the workshop being to highlight the necessity of high-quality data, as well as cross-lingual datasets. Invited Speakers - Barbara Plank, LMU Munich - Debanjan Ghosh, Princeton, USA Further details and info on the invited talks will be announced shortly. Submission Guidelines Papers must be submitted electronically through Softconf, using the following link: https://softconf.com/lrec2026/NLE2026/ Submissions should: • Be 4–8 pages, excluding references and optional Ethics Statements • Follow the LREC 2026 style guidelines, available on the conference website: https://lrec2026.info/authors-kit/ • Use templates provided here: https://lrec2026.info/calls/second-call-for-papers/ Authors will be asked to supply information on any language resources (broadly defined — data, tools, standards, evaluation sets, etc.) used in or resulting from their work. ELRA strongly encourages sharing such resources to support reproducibility and reuse. Accepted papers will appear in the workshop proceedings. Presentation format (oral/poster) will be based solely on how best to communicate the work. Important Dates • 02 March 2026 — Submission Deadline • 20 March 2026 — Notification of Acceptance • 30 March 2026 — Camera-ready Papers Due Endorsements The workshop is endorsed by: Collaborative Research Centre 1412 "REGISTER" funded by the DFG Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) Programme Committee - Beata Beigman Klebanov, ETS, USA - Maria Berger, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany - Yuri Bizzoni, Aarhus University, Denmark - Kenneth Church, VecML Inc., USA - Stefanie Dipper, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany - Markus Egg, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany - Anna Feldman, Montclair State University, USA - Debanjan Ghosh, Princeton, USA - Valia Kordoni, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany - Emmy Liu, CMU, USA - Petya Osenova, Sofia University "St. Kl. Ohridski", Bulgaria - Sebastian Padó, IMS Stuttgart, Germany - Gudrun Reijnierse, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands - Sebastian Reimann, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany - Adam Roussel, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany - Tatjana Scheffler, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany - Sabine Schulte im Walde, Universität Stuttgart - Vered Shwartz, The University of British Columbia, Canada - Caroline Sporleder, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany - Egon Stemle, EURAC, Italy Organizers • Markus Egg — Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany • Valia Kordoni - Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany Contact: kordonie at rz.hu-berlin.de

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[CFP]-DravidianLangTech-at ACL 2026
by Bharathi Raja Asoka Chakravarthi 19 Feb '26

19 Feb '26

*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------* *Call for Participation for *DravidianLangTech-2026 Workshop and Sharedtaks @ ACL-2026 *-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------* *CFP for the Sixth Workshop on Speech and Language Technologies for Dravidian Languages- * *DravidianLangTech-2026 (**Theme: Multilingual Multicultural Multimodal LLMs)* *---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------* *DravidianLangTech-2026 @ The 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) 2026* *Venue: San Diego, California, United States* *Conference Date: July 02 - 07, 2026* *Workshop Website: https://sites.google.com/view/dravidianlangtech-2026 <https://sites.google.com/view/dravidianlangtech-2026>* ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- With the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence and language technologies, internet usage has continued to surge globally, enabling many widely spoken languages to adapt successfully to the digital age. However, regional and underresourced languages still face significant challenges due to limited computational resources, annotated datasets, and specialized tools. One such group is the Dravidian language family, primarily spoken in South India and Sri Lanka, with communities across Nepal, Pakistan, Malaysia, London, and other parts of the world. The Dravidian languages, with a history spanning more than 4,500 years and spoken by millions of speakers, are under-resourced in speech and natural language processing. Despite growing research interest, gaps persist in areas such as speech recognition, multimodal processing, and generative AI applications for Dravidian languages. This is the sixth workshop on speech and language technologies for Dravidian languages, building upon the success of the previous editions. DravidianLangTech-2026 continues to serve as a collaborative forum for researchers, practitioners, and students to share insights and advance computational methods for Dravidian languages. The main objectives of DravidianLangTech-2026 are as follows, The broader objectives of DravidianLangTech-2026 will be - To explore challenges and innovations in developing speech and language resources for Dravidian languages. - To design and adapt language technologies for multilingual, multimodal, and code-mixed Dravidian contexts. - To facilitate collaboration between the global Dravidian language community and international scholars across computational linguistics, AI, and digital humanities. - To address ethical, cultural, and inclusivity aspects in the creation of language technologies for under-represented communities. - To encourage the integration of Agentic AI frameworks for building interactive, explainable, and collaborative language systems in Dravidian contexts. *Call for Papers :* DravidianLangTech-2026 welcomes theoretical, empirical, and application driven contributions on any Dravidian languages (e.g., Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu, Tulu, Allar, Aranadan, Attapadya, Kurumba, etc.) that advance language processing, speech technologies, multimodality, or resource development. Submissions can address challenges in monolingual, bilingual, and code-mixed settings as well as crosslingual and low-resource transfer approaches. Topics of interest include but are not limited to - Corpus(Data) development, annotation tools, benchmarks, and evaluation methodologies - Detecting Hate Speech, Offensive Language, Misinformation, Fake News, Spam, and Rumor - Generative AI and Prompt Engineering for Dravidian languages - Agentic AI and Multi-agent Systems: workflow orchestration, reasoning agents, and collaborative agents for Dravidian language processing - Multimodal processing: Text, Speech, Image, Video, and Memes in Dravidian contexts - Speech Technology: Automatic Speech Recognition, Speech Synthesis, Voice Conversion - Impaired/Normal Speech Recognition and Assistive Technologies for Dravidian speech - Accent Recognition, Verification, and Dialect Modeling - Emotion and Sentiment Recognition from Dravidian Speech and Text - Machine Translation and Cross-lingual Transfer in Dravidian languages - Language Resources for Generative and Instruction-Tuned LLMs - Document Analysis and Understanding for Dravidian texts and scripts - Object Detection and Recognition in multimodal Dravidian datasets - Ethical and Fair AI for Low-resource Language Communities - Healthcare and Mental Health Applications (e.g., depression detection, doctor-patient communication) in Dravidian speech - Educational Applications: Digital literacy, inclusive tools for rural Dravidian language communities *---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------* *Workshop Paper Submission Link <https://openreview.net/group?id=aclweb.org/ACL/2026/Workshop/DravidianLangT…>* *---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------* *Important Dates* *---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------* *First call for workshop papers: December 10, 2025Second call for workshop papers: January 15, 2026Third call for workshop papers: February 20, 2026Direct paper submission deadline: March 5, 2026Pre-reviewed ARR commitment deadline: March 24, 2026Notification of acceptance: April 28, 2026Camera-ready paper due: May 12, 2026Pre-recorded video due (hard deadline): June 4, 2026* *Workshop dates: July 2-3, 2026* with regards, Dr. Bharathi Raja Chakravarthi, Assistant Professor / Lecturer-above-the-bar Programme Director (MSc Computer Science - Artificial Intelligence) <https://www.universityofgalway.ie/courses/taught-postgraduate-courses/compu…> School of Computer Science, University of Galway, Ireland Insight SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics, Data Science Institute, University of Galway, Ireland E-mail: bharathiraja.akr(a)gmail.com , bharathi.raja(a)universityofgalway.ie <bharathiraja.asokachakravarthi(a)universityofgalway.ie> Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=irCl028AAAAJ&hl=en Website: https://research.universityofgalway.ie/en/persons/bharathi-raja-asoka-chakr…

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CFP: Sixth Workshop on Language Technology for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (LT-EDI-2026) at ACL 2026
by Bharathi Raja Asoka Chakravarthi 19 Feb '26

19 Feb '26

*Apologies for cross-posting* *Second call for paper* *Sixth Workshop on Language Technology for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (LT-EDI-2026)* at The 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) 2026 Place: San Diego, California, United States Link: https://sites.google.com/view/lt-edi-2026/home Tagline: Towards Fair and Inclusive Language Technologies for All. Call for Papers: Following the success of the first five editions of the LTEDI 2026 workshop (LDK 2025, EACL 2024, RANLP 2023, ACL 2022. EACL 2021), the workshop aims to bring together researchers and practitioners working on NLP, LLMs and other AI fields with social scientists and interdisciplinary researchers. LT -EDI-2026 invites theoretical, empirical, and applied papers from the Natural Language Processing (NLP), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and interdisciplinary communities particularly those focusing on bias in language technologies. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: - Datasets, and Benchmarks for Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion - - - - Construction and annotation of datasets for EDI, including benchmarks for bias detection and mitigation. - Compilation of resources curated for fairness, inclusivity, and accessibility. - Methodologies for annotating intersectional identities (gender, race, disability, religion, sexual orientation, etc.). - Bias Detection and Mitigation in LLMs - - - - Techniques for identifying, measuring, and mediating gender, racial, disability, and other societal biases in NLP and LLMs. - The impact of bias in deployed NLP/LLM systems - Gender-neutral modeling and representational fairness in LLMs - Detection and mitigation of intersectional biases including gender, racial, gender identity, disability, and other societal biases. - Advances in bias mitigation in large language models: in-context learning, prompt engineering, conditional text generation, and adversarial training. - Inclusive Language and Counter-Narratives for LLMs - - - - Algorithms and resources for inclusive language generation with LLMs. - Counter-narrative modeling for combating toxicity, hate speech, and misinformation targeting marginalized communities. - Dialogue systems and multi-agent approaches that align with inclusivity goals. - Human-in-the-loop and participatory strategies for enhancing inclusiveness. - Multilingual and Multicultural Approaches for LLMs - - - - Multicultural and multilingual LLMs and approaches - Speech and language recognition for minority and under-resourced groups - Code-mixed and cross-lingual approaches for inclusive technologies - Responsible, Explainable, and Trustworthy LLMs for EDI - - - - Detecting and mitigating hallucinations, misinformation, and toxicity in LLM systems - Explainable and trustworthy LLMs - Evaluation frameworks incorporating ethics, accountability, and transparency - Direct paper submission deadline: March 5, 2026 - Pre-reviewed ARR commitment deadline: March 24, 2026 - Notification of acceptance: April 28, 2026 - Camera-ready paper due: May 12, 2026 - Pre-recorded video due (hard deadline): June 4, 2026 - Workshop dates: July 4, 2026 with regards, Dr. Bharathi Raja Chakravarthi, Assistant Professor / Lecturer-above-the-bar Programme Director (MSc Computer Science - Artificial Intelligence) <https://www.universityofgalway.ie/courses/taught-postgraduate-courses/compu…> School of Computer Science, University of Galway, Ireland Insight SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics, Data Science Institute, University of Galway, Ireland E-mail: bharathiraja.akr(a)gmail.com , bharathi.raja(a)universityofgalway.ie <bharathiraja.asokachakravarthi(a)universityofgalway.ie> Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=irCl028AAAAJ&hl=en Website: https://research.universityofgalway.ie/en/persons/bharathi-raja-asoka-chakr…

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open postdoc position in NLP research
by Ali Basirat 18 Feb '26

18 Feb '26

Dear all, We are recruiting a two-year Postdoctoral Fellow in Natural Language Processing and Representation Learning of Metaphorical Language in Large Language Models at the Centre for Language Technology, University of Copenhagen. This role will contribute to the METALLM project — a cutting-edge research initiative exploring how large language models process metaphors and what this reveals about language, cognition, and culture. If you have a strong background in computational linguistics, NLP, and representation learning, this is a fantastic chance to advance your research in a dynamic international environment. Start: 1 August 2026 (or soon after) Application Deadline: 15 March 2026 Application Link: https://jobportal.ku.dk/videnskabelige-stillinger/?show=156836 Feel free to reach out if you have any questions about your application. Best regards, Ali Basirat<https://nors.ku.dk/english/staff/?pure=en/persons/776431> Associate Professor of Natural Language Processing University of Copenhagen Center for Language Technology (CST)<https://cst.ku.dk/english/> Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics<https://nors.ku.dk/> Emil Holms Kanal 2 2300 København S Email:alib@hum.ku.dk Room: 22.3.34

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Call for participation Multilingual Easy to Read Translation - MER-TRANS-2026
by Horacio Saggion 18 Feb '26

18 Feb '26

*MER-TRANS-2026: https://lastus-taln-upf.github.io/mertrans-iberlef-2026/ <https://lastus-taln-upf.github.io/mertrans-iberlef-2026/>IBERLEF 2026: https://sites.google.com/view/iberlef-2026 <https://sites.google.com/view/iberlef-2026>Apologies for cross-postingWe are pleased to announce the launching of the Shared Task: Multilingual Easy to Read Translation (MER-TRANS) in the context of the IberLef 2026 Evaluation Forum. - Context* *Linguistic access to information is increasingly recognised as a fundamental citizens’ right. For example, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) includes accessibility as one key enabler for a more inclusive society, while the European Union adopted the European Accessibility Act (EAA) in 2019, which requires that many everyday products and services, including digital information services, comply with accessibility standards. The UNCRPD and the EAA stress that information has to be provided in accessible language, such as plain language or easy-to-read language in order to allow the different population segments with language comprehension difficulties to exercise their recognized right to participate in society and public life. Providing information in easy language in a real-world setting is challenging. High-quality, easy-to-read content must typically be written or translated by human experts following specialized guidelines, and then often validated by target readers. This manual process requires considerable effort, time, and expertise, which limits how much content can be produced or translated into easy formats. Therefore, this MER-TRANS shared task aims at advancing the state of the art in the field of automatic easy-to-read translation with specific emphasis on Romance languages, more concretely, in Catalan, Italian, and Spanish. * * - Task OverviewIn this shared task, we invite participating teams to automatically produce easy to read versions of texts and/or sentences. The texts will be sampled from the iDEM corpus, a multilingual corpus in the domain of democratic participation, which has been simplified by human experts following easy-to-read recommendations and high-quality validation procedures. There will also be a surprise language task to be revealed closer to the release of the test data. Up to three submissions per language will be allowed per participant team. - Data and EvaluationUnlike previous challenges where the data remained of restricted use, the iDEM corpus, with original and adapted versions, will be made fully available to the community, the documents for participants to produce adaptations will be provided during the test phase, and the full dataset during the IberLef workshop in September 2026. A small trial dataset will be released; it will be sampled from the iDEM corpus, considering the occurrence of different difficulties addressed by the easy-to-read adaptations. The examples will contain both the original text excerpts and easy-to-read versions. The test datawill consist of only the original complex text excerpts. Evaluation will be carried out with automatic metrics borrowed from current text simplification evaluation research, such as SARI and/or BLEUE and semantic similarity scores when appropriate. - System Description Papers and ProceedingsAll participating teams will be invited to submit a system description paper describing their methods, models, and experimental findings: further information about formatting and length will be given in due time. Submitted papers will be reviewed by at least two peer reviewers.Papers will be required to describe fully Reproducible solutions which contribute to Open Science. Accepted system description papers will be published at no cost in the Proceedings of the Iberian Languages Evaluation Forum (IberLEF 2026), hosted by CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org).Authors of accepted papers will be invited to present their work at the IberLEF 2026 workshop. Presentation at the workshop is encouraged but not mandatory for publication in the proceedings. - Who Should Participate?Participation is open to all. - Important DatesRegistration opens: Open nowRegistration closes: 28 Feb 2026Trial data release: 06 Mar 2026Test data release: 06 Apr 2026System outputs submission deadline : 13 Apr 2026Evaluation results published: 27 Apr 2026System Description Papers: 01 Jun 2026Papers acceptance: 14 Jun 2026Camera-ready papers due: 21 Jun 2026IberLEF 2026 Workshop: 22 Sept 2026 - How to ParticipateIn order to participate, teams must register using the registration form available at the task website https://lastus-taln-upf.github.io/mertrans-iberlef-2026/ <https://lastus-taln-upf.github.io/mertrans-iberlef-2026/>Note that registration is mandatory in order to access the data and submit system outputs. - Task OrganizersHoracio Saggion — Universitat Pompeu Fabra, SpainNelson Pérez Rojas — Universidad de Costa Rica, Costa RicaStefan Bott — Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain Nouran Khallaf — University of Leeds, UKMehrzad Tareh — Universitat Pompeu Fabra, SpainDaniel Adanza — Universitat Pompeu Fabra, SpainAlmudena Rascon — Plena Inclusion Madrid, SpainSandra Szasz — Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain* -- Horacio Saggion Full Professor / Chair in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Head of the Natural Language Processing Group - TALN Project Coordinator iDEM Project (HE) Co-PI of the AI-BOOST project (HE) PI of the IDEAL project (HE) Universitat Pompeu Fabra https://twitter.com/h_saggion https://www.linkedin.com/in/horacio-saggion-1749b916 -- Horacio Saggion Full Professor / Chair in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Head of the Natural Language Processing Group - TALN Project Coordinator iDEM Project (HE) Co-PI of the AI-BOOST project (HE) PI of the IDEAL project (HE) Universitat Pompeu Fabra https://twitter.com/h_saggion https://www.linkedin.com/in/horacio-saggion-1749b916

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WebSci'26: Poster Deadlines Extended, Travel Grants, Registration is OPEN!
by Kaiser, Sierra Ann 18 Feb '26

18 Feb '26

Dear colleagues, Here are key updates for ACM WebSci’26<https://websci26.org/?page_id=513> (May 26–29, 2026 | Braunschweig, Germany): * Poster Deadline Extended: February 25, 2026 | Details Here<https://websci26.org/?page_id=513> Didn’t get your full paper accepted? Don’t miss the opportunity to be part of WebSci’26—submit your work as a poster. It’s an excellent venue to showcase your research and receive valuable feedback. * Student Travel Grants Still Available: February 28, 2026 | Details Here<https://websci26.org/?page_id=529> A limited number of travel grants are available to support student participation. We strongly encourage eligible students to apply. * Registration is Open: Early registration until March 15, 2026| Register Here<https://websci26.org/?page_id=661> Secure your spot today! Registration for WebSci’26 is officially open. Join us in celebrating 20 years of interdisciplinary Web Science research and engaging discussions on the Web, society, AI, and beyond. We look forward to welcoming you to WebSci’26. Best regards, The WebSci’26 Organizing Committee ------------------- Sierra Kaiser (she/her) Koordinatorin / Coordinator Stuttgart Research Focus – Interchange Forum for Reflecting on Intelligent Systems (IRIS) Universität Stuttgart Geschwister-Scholl-Str. 24D | 3.352 | 70174 Stuttgart-Mitte Universitätsstr. 32 | 00.121 | 70569 Stuttgart-Vaihingen Tel.: +49 (0)711 685 84 371 Email: sierra.kaiser(a)iris.uni-stuttgart.de<mailto:sierra.kaiser@iris.uni-stuttgart.de> Mastodon<https://bawü.social/@Stuttgart_IRIS> | LinkedIn<https://www.linkedin.com/company/interchange-forum-for-reflecting-on-intell…> | BlueSky<https://bsky.app/profile/unistuttgartiris.bsky.social> | IRIS Newsletter<https://t63605f96.emailsys1a.net/91/8138/3f626b8c5a/subscribe/form.html?_g=…> www.iris.uni-stuttgart.de/<http://www.iris.uni-stuttgart.de/>

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Postdoctoral position at the University of Amsterdam
by Ekaterina Shutova 18 Feb '26

18 Feb '26

Postdoctoral position at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands Salary: EUR 3.546 - EUR 5.538 gross per month Closing date: 15 March 2026 We have an open postdoctoral position in natural language processing (NLP). The focus of the project is on the development of methodologies for multilingual NLP and alignment of large language models. We welcome applications from candidates with a PhD in NLP or Machine Learning and an interest in AI alignment. The position is for three years. The expected start date is September 2026, but there is some flexibility. For further information and to apply: https://werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies/postdoctoral-researcher-in-natural-la… For any questions, please send an email to e.shutova(a)uva.nl

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