I Iberian SLTech 2009
Proceedings of the
I Joint SIG-IL/Microsoft Workshop
on Speech and Language Technologies for Iberian Languages
Porto Salvo, Portugal, September 3-4, 2009
Edited by:
António Teixeira, Miguel Sales Dias & Daniela Braga
Published by:
Designeed
ISBN: 978-989-96278-1-9
Portuguese National Library Number: 298538/09
Preface
The ISCA Special Interest Group on Iberian Languages (SIG-IL) board, pursuing the
aims of organizing conferences, schools and workshops, promoting industry/university
collaboration and offering a forum to discuss opportunities in research and industry
applications in the field of Speech and Language Technology, decided to organize a
new event, I Iberian SLTech - I Joint SIG-IL/Microsoft Workshop on Speech and
Language Technologies for Iberian Languages. A practical way of making possible
the event in 2009 was to join efforts with Microsoft Language Development Center
(MLDC), in Portugal, associating the SIG-IL event to a new edition of their past
Workshops (I Microsoft Workshop on Speech Technology - Building bridges between
industry and academia, Porto Salvo, May 2, 2007 and Propor 2008 Special Session:
Applications of Portuguese Speech and Language Technologies, September 10, 2008,
Curia, Portugal). The event also had the support of Red Temática en Tecnologías del
Habla (RTTH).
The main objective for this new event is to create a forum for the exchange of
ideas and promote collaboration in the fields of Speech and Language Technologies
for all the institutions who work on Iberian Languages. It also our goal to continue
this event in the following years and that it may be held in the different places of the
SIG-IL geography.
The Organization is honoured to receive Alex Acero as keynote speaker who
will bring us the following topic: “Building accurate and user-friendly speech systems”. Alex Acero is the Research Area Manager of the Speech Group in Microsoft
Research, in Redmond (USA) and is one of the world leadings researchers in Speech
Technology, directing an organization with 70 researchers in audio, speech, multimedia, communication, natural language, and information retrieval. He is also an
affiliate Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle. Dr. Acero is author of the books “Acoustical and Environmental Robustness in
Automatic Speech Recognition” (Kluwer, 1993) and “Spoken Language Processing”
(Prentice Hall, 2001).
Our Scientific Committee selected the following contributions for presentation:
21 posters (3 from students), 4 recent PhDs, 2 demos and 8 groups and projects. The
posters covered 6 areas: systems and applications; resources and tools; speech recognition; speech synthesis; gender, speaker and language recognition and language
processing. These contributions were edited in online, CD and paper proceedings.
We accepted 18 contributions with authors from Portugal, 15 from Spain, 3 from Germany, 1 from USA, 1 from Cuba and 1 from Brazil.
We would like to send our special thanks to all the Chairs and Scientific Committee members that helped us in the proposals’ revision and conference organization
in such a tight schedule, to our keynote speaker for bringing us such an interesting
topic and to all authors for submitting the most recent advances of their work on
Iberian languages speech and language processing.
We expect that this is the first edition of a growing annual event that aims to
attract more researchers in all countries that work on the latest advances on speech
and language processing for the Iberian Languages.
The Iberian SL Tech 2009 Organizers,
António Teixeira, SIG-IL Chair, IEETA
Daniela Braga, Microsoft
Committees
General Chairs
António Teixeira, SIG-IL Chair, Universidade de Aveiro/IEETA, Portugal
Miguel Dias, Microsoft, Portugal
Daniela Braga, Microsoft, Portugal
Local Organization Committee
Daniela Braga, Microsoft, Portugal
Francisco Pires, Microsoft, Portugal
Bruno Reis Bechtlufft, Microsoft, Portugal
Demos Chair
Rubén San-Segundo, SIG-IL ISCA Liaison, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
Program Chair
Aldebaro Klautau, SIG-IL Secretary, Universidade Federal do Pará, Brazil
Juan Arturo Nolazco Flores, SIG-IL Vice-Chair, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico
Carmen García Mateo, University of Vigo, Spain
Presentations and Panels Chair
António Teixeira, SIG-IL Chair, Universidade de Aveiro/IEETA, Portugal
Daniela Braga, Microsoft, Portugal
Scientific Committee
Abel Herrera Camacho, FI-UNAM, México
Alberto Abad, INESC-ID Lisboa, Portugal
Alberto Simões, Universidade do Minho, Portugal
Aldebaro Klautau, Universidade Federal do Pará, Brazil
Alex Acero, Microsoft Research, USA
Alexander Gelbuck, CIC - IPN, México
Alfonso Ortega, Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain
Alvaro Iriarte, Universidade do Minho, Portugal
Amália Andrade, CLUL/Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
Andreia Rauber, Universidade do Minho, Portugal
Antonia Marti Antonín, Universidad de Barcelona, Spain
António Bonafonte, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain
António Branco, FCUL, Portugal
António Serralheiro, L2F INESC-ID and Academia Militar, Portugal
António Teixeira, IEETA/Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal
Ascensión Gallardo, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain
Belinda Maia, FLUL, Portugal
Carlos Meneses, ISEL, Portugal
Carlos Teixeira, FCUL, Portugal
Céu Viana, FLUL, Portugal
Ciro Martins, IEETA/Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal
Daniela Braga, MLDC/Microsoft, Portugal
Diana Santos, SINTEF, Norway
Doroteo Torres, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain
Encarna Segarra, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain
Eva Navas, Universidad del País Vasco, Spain
Fábio Violaro, Universidade Estadual de Campinas - UNICAMP, Brazil
Fernando Gil Resende Jr., Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Fernando Perdigão, Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal
Francisco Campillo, Universidade de Vigo, Spain
Francisco Vaz, IEETA/Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal
Frank Seide, Microsoft Research Asia - Speech Group
Hugo Meinedo, INESC-ID Lisboa, Portugal
Inmaculada Hernaez Rioja, Universidad del País Vasco, Spain
Isabel Trancoso, INESC-ID/IST, Portugal
João Veloso, Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto, Portugal
Jorge Baptista, Universidade do Algarve, Portugal
José Manuel Pardo, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
José Ramón Calvo de Lara, CENATAV, Cuba
José Teixeira, Universidade do Minho, Portugal
Juan Manuel Montero, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
Juan Nolazco Flores, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico
Luís Caldas Oliveira, INESC-ID/IST, Portugal
Luis Hernandez, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
Luis Villaseñor Pineda, INAOE, Mexico
Manuel Montes y Gómez, INAOE, Mexico
Maria Aldina Marques, Universidade do Minho, Portugal
Maria Helena Mira Mateus, ILTEC, Portugal
Mário Silva, FCUL, Portugal
Nestor Yoma, Universidad de Chile, Chile
Nuno Mamede, INESC-ID/IST, Portugal
Paula Carvalho, FCUL, Portugal
Paulo Quaresma, Universidade de Évora, Portugal
Plínio Barbosa, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil
Ranniery Maia, NICT, Japan
Ricardo de Córdoba, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
Rubén San Segundo, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
Sérgio Paulo, INESC-ID Lisboa, Portugal
Thomas Pellegrini, INESC-ID Lisboa, Portugal
Vera Strube de Lima, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Violeta Quental, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Xavier Gómez Guinovart, Universidade de Vigo, Spain
Xosé Ramón Freixeiro Mato, Universidade da Coruña, Spain