--- CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS ---
         Association for Machine Translation in the Americas 

        AMTA-98 Conference, Langhorne, PA, October 28-31, 1998 



             MACHINE TRANSLATION AND THE INFORMATION SOUP
           (MT in a growing field of language technologies)


Following successful AMTA conferences in 1994 and 1996, the third
conference of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas
will be held in Langhorne, PA, at the Sheraton Bucks County Hotel, on
October 28-31, 1998.

The MT Summit last year commemorated the 50th anniversary of machine
translation.  During that time, MT grew from a tantalizing dream to a
respectable and stable scientific-linguistic enterprise, with users,
commercial systems, university research, and Government participation.
But until very recently, MT has been performed in a relatively
isolated manner, as a distinct enterprise.

This situation is changing rapidly.  The explosive growth of the web
has brought multilingual text into the reach of nearly everyone with a
computer.  It is increasingly urgent that the various types of
language processing technologies--information retrieval, automated
summarization, multimodal and multilingual display, and machine
translation--be interconnected.

Once again there will be something for everyone!  Retaining the
pattern established by its predecessors, AMTA-98 will offer a blend of
invited talks, panel discussions, research papers, system
demonstrations and descriptions, tutorials, workshops, book exhibits,
and social events.  The four days of the conference will also
facilitate gatherings of the Special Interest Groups on topics ranging
from interlinguas and ontologies, lexicons, standards and data
exchange, MT on PCs, and MT evaluation.

The overall intent of the conference is to bring together MT
developers, researchers, and users, to share the latest information on
MT and to forge partnerships for addressing the challenge of language
barriers that impede communication on the Information Highway.
Participation by members of AMTA's sister organizations in Europe and
Asia is strongly encouraged.

Invited talks and panel discussions will highlight topical and
controversial questions, encouraging lively interactions, as they did
at past conferences.  In the theory sessions, technical papers will
address a wide range of topics, while in practical sessions, the
problems of developing and bringing MT systems to market or
intergrating MT technology into the workplace will be discussed.  In
addition, booths can be rented to display systems and products.

CONFERENCE ORGANIZERS
General Chair:  Eduard Hovy, USC Information Sciences Institute
Program Chairs: David Farwell, CRL, New Mexico State University 
                Laurie Gerber, SYSTRAN Software, Inc. (San Diego)
Local Arrangements Chair:  Martha Palmer, University of Pennsylvania


   AMTA-98: PAPER AND SYSTEM DESCRIPTION/DEMONSTRATION SUBMISSIONS.  

Authors/system developers are invited to submit three kinds of
presentations:

1. Theoretical papers: Unpublished papers are requested about original 
   work on all aspects of Machine Translation.  However, given the
   theme of this year's conference, special consideration will be
   given to papers which address advances in multilingual language and
   information technologies which have a potential impact on machine
   translation.  Papers should be in English, not longer than 10 pages,
   with minimum character font size of 11 pt.

2. System descriptions with optional system demonstrations: Approx. 25
   minutes will be allocated per system description/demo.  Submissions 
   should be in English, not longer than 4 pages.  If a system
   demonstration is included, please provide the following
   information:
   - hardware platform,
   - operating system,
   - name and contact information of system operations specialist.

3. Studies of users experiences with implementing MT or testing its
   applicability to some task.  Users and marketing consultants are
   especially welcome to submit.  Studies should be in English, not
   longer than 8 pages, with minimum character font size of 11 pt.


First page: All types of submission should include a separate title
page with the following information:
- paper title,
- author(s)' name(s), address(es), telephone and fax numbers, email
   address(es),
- one-paragraph abstract,
- for theoretical papers: subject area keyword(s)
  for user studies: the words "User study"
  for system descriptions/demos: the words "System description/demo".


Submissions are due at address below on June 1, 1998.
Authors will be notified of acceptance on July 15, 1998.
Final copies of papers are due on August 31, 1998.


Softcopy submissions (papers that do not print will be returned to the 
author): 
  email address: david@crl.nmsu.edu
  subject line: AMTA-98 submission 
  paper encoding:
    - ASCII plain text 
    - Microsoft Word (RTF format) 
    - PostScript
  
Hardcopy submissions (please send four (4) copies): 
  AMTA-98: David Farwell
  Computing Research Laboratory
  Box 30001/3CRL
  New Mexico State University
  Las Cruces, NM  88003
  USA



   AMTA-98: TUTORIAL AND WORKSHOP SUBMISSIONS.

Proposals for tutorials and workshops are also welcome at this time
for topics of direct interest and impact for MT researchers,
developers, vendors or users of MT technologies.  Approx. 3 hours
will be allocated per tutorial.  Approx. 7 hours may be allocated per
workshop.  Please state the topic(s) to be addressed, the rationale
for addressing it and the structure of the activities.  Submissions
should be in English and not longer than 4 pages.

Please submit proposals as soon as possible to David Farwell at the
address above.  Proposals must be submitted on or before April 3,
1998.



For general conference information and further details as it becomes
available, visit:

  http://www.isi.edu/natural-language/AMTA98.html