Second WMT shared task on sign language translation

Event Notification Type: 
Call for Participation
Abbreviated Title: 
WMT-SLT2023
Location: 
Singapore
Wednesday, 6 September 2023 to Thursday, 7 September 2023
State: 
Country: 
City: 
Contact: 
WMT Tasks
WMT Sign Language Task
Submission Deadline: 
Tuesday, 15 August 2023

WMT-SLT 4: Motivation 2023 https://youtu.be/QjqBiRH0e_0
WMT-SLT 5: Summary 2023 https://youtu.be/ngUDIZDvzvY

We are excited to announce the second edition of the Shared Task on Sign Language Translation (WMT-SLT 23) at WMT 2023, co-located with EMNLP 2023.

*NEW DEVELOPMENTS SINCE THE FIRST CALL*

(1) Release of all our provided training data
(2) Release of baseline systems

*OVERVIEW*

This shared task is concerned with automatic translation between signed and spoken languages. The task requires processing visual information (such as video and poses) beyond the well-known paradigm of text-to-text machine translation.

This year the shared task features two tracks: translation from a signed language to a spoken language (signed-to-spoken track) and vice versa (spoken-to-signed track). We cover the following translation directions:

signed-to-spoken:
* Swiss German Sign Language (DSGS) to German (DE)

spoken-to-signed:
* German (DE) to Swiss German Sign Language (DSGS)
* French (FR) to French Sign Language (LSF)
* Italian (IT) to Italian Sign Language (LIS)

We provide training data and baseline systems for all translation directions above.

Submissions to the signed-to-spoken track will be ranked on a leaderboard. Submissions to the spoken-to-signed track are not ranked on the leaderboard while the task is running, but we still encourage participants to submit such systems.

We aim to provide human evaluation for all submitted systems, regardless of the translation direction.

We will ask participants to submit a system description paper to WMT 2023.

*IMPORTANT DATES*

* 22 June 2023: Release of training and development data
* 22 June 2023: Release of baseline systems
* 01 August 2023: Release of test data
* 01 August 2023: System submission opens
* 15 August 2023: System submission deadline
* 05 September 2023: Paper submission deadline
* 06 October 2023: Paper acceptance notification
* 18 October 2023: Camera-ready version due
* 6 - 7 December 2023: Overview of results at WMT
All deadlines are AoE (Anywhere on Earth). Dates are in line with general deadlines of WMT.

*ORGANIZERS*

* Mathias Müller, University of Zurich
* Sarah Ebling, University of Zurich and ZHAW Winterthur
* Eleftherios Avramidis, DFKI Berlin
* Cristina España-Bonet, DFKI Saarbrücken
* Dimitar Shterionov, Tilburg University
* Amit Moryossef, Bar-Ilan University / University of Zurich
* Zifan Jiang, University of Zurich
* Oscar Koller, Microsoft
* Necati Cihan Camgoz, Meta
* Roman Grundkiewicz, Microsoft
* Davy Van Landuyt, European Union of the Deaf
* Annelies Braffort, CNRS and Paris-Saclay University
* Richard Bowden, University of Surrey
* Anne Goehring, University of Zurich
* Annette Rios, University of Zurich
* Malihe Alikhani, University of Pittsburgh
* Mert Inan, University of Pittsburgh

*MORE INFORMATION*
For more information, please visit our website: www.wmt-slt.com
If you have any comments and/or questions, do not hesitate to contact us: wmt-tasks [at] googlegroups.com