Language, Technology and Media Symposium April 15, 2011

“Language Technology, and Society”
Professor Richard Sproat, Oregon Health & Science University
The alphabet might not seem to have a lot in common with, say, a machine translation system. Yet both are instances of technologies that were developed specifically for language. Tracing the history of language technology from its inception over 5000 years ago on the plains of Sumer to the present day, one talk highlights the profound impact of literacy.

“Wikipedia in Translation: Writing Worlds in Common(s)”
Professor Amit Ray, Rochester Institute of Technology
What can Wikipedia teach us about categorical shifts in how human beings interact with their varied, sometimes virtual, now computationally-aided, environments? The interactions between writing communities spread out across some 270 natural languages (and made possible through an open, extensible free software platform) perform what is becoming the largest human language translational activity in history. Recent turns to recursive human-aided machine translation highlight the cultural, economic and political dimensions of Wikipedia(s) as distributed, hybrid and global.

“Bilingual Creativity, Multiple Mixing, and Global Advertising”
Professor Tej K. Bhatia, Syracuse University
Examining global advertising, particularly through the lens of the bilingual/multilingual mind and linguistic creativity, in addition to key issues in international advertising such “standardization” vs “adaptation”, the talk suggests that multiple mixing lends itself to a variety of special effects that outweigh and bypass the potential negative effects of such mixing. The bilingual linguistic creativity can best be explained in terms of what is proposed as the Theory of Optimization.

http://people.rit.edu/coagla/ltm2011/speakers.html
http://www.rit.edu/news/story.php?id=48257

Rochester Institute of Technology
Golisano Hall 70-2400
20 Lomb Memorial Dr
Rochester NY 14623

Official Website: http://people.rit.edu/coagla/ltm2011/