INFITT – Press ReleaseINFITT – Press ReleaseTamil Internet 2011ConferenceTamil Internet 2011Conference

Dates: 17-19 June 211VenueUniv. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

INFITT - generalINFITT - general

INFITT acronym for INTERNATIONAL FORUM FOR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN TAMIL

உத்தமம் - உலகத் தமழ் தகவல் தொத�ழில் நுட்ப மன்றம்

Non-profit NGO started in 2000 in Singapore Functions since 2000 as a NGO registered in

California, USA Objective: to assist growth of Tamil Information

Technology and Tamil Content on the Internet, serve as a « single reference » international liason body for Tamil Computing /Tamil IT/Tamil Internet

Has a written Constitution defining its objectives, overall structure and operational procedures

INFITT - structureINFITT - structure

• Membership drawn from all over the world, with major stakeholders coming from IN, SL, MY and SG (regions where Tamil enjoys special status as an official language)

• Membership open to anyone committed to « observe and support various articles of the INFITT Constitution »

• Three level structure: gross root membership (General Body/GB) elects 51-member General Council/GC (weighted proportional representation of all Tamil speaking regions); GC in turns elects 7-member Executive Committee EC.

• General Administration through Chair, Vice-Chair and Executive Director, all directly elected by the EC

• Discussions throughout the year via mailing lists

Tamil Internet ConferencesTamil Internet Conferences

• Tamil Internet Conferences (“Tamil Internet”) are major annual technical conference, aimed to bring together members of academic community, software professionals, bloggers and Tamil portal site promoters and end-users working on Tamil computing /Tamil IT-ICT and Tamil Internet

• Provide an annual forum for all interested stake holders to present and review recent advances in various domains, to build collaborative networking and to identify areas which need immediate and long term solutions to advance the field

• Present USA conference “tenth” in the series; Previous conferences held at Singapore (1997), Chennai, India (1999), Singapore (2000), Kuala Lumpur, MY (2001), San Francisco, CA, USA (2002), Chennai, India (2003), Singapore, SG (2004), Koeln, Germany (2009), Coimbatore, India (2010)

• Since launch of INFITT in 2000, TIC series are being managed by INFITT.

Scope of Tamil Internet ConferencesScope of Tamil Internet Conferences

Presentation of research and development in various areas of Tamil computing, Tamil Internet in technical sessions (Conference Hub)

Conference (duration 3 days) generally have 3 hubs: conference hub, exhibition hub (display of Tamil softwares and Tools) and Community Hub (Tamil IT related competitions, tutorial sessions, hands-on opportunities to learn and use advances in Tamil Computing

Conference venue rotated globally, previous conferences held at India, Singapore, Malaysia, USA and Germany

Topics addressed at TICsTopics addressed at TICs

• Hardware, software development for implementation of Tamil Computing in all platforms Windows-Mac-Unix-Mobile (fonts, drivers, text editors, spell check, grammar check, search engines,..) and in Internet, ensuring error-free exchange of information, accessible 24/7.

• Advanced applications such as text-to-speech synthesis, voice recognition, data mining of Tamil content in the Net, machine translation, Optical character /hand written text recognition, Natural Language Processing, Language corpus/corpus texts,..

• Computer-aided teaching of Tamil online (web portals) and offline (multimedia-based softwares), Development of Tamil Content in the Net including Tamil Blogs and Tamil Wikipedia

Message from CPCMessage from CPCConf. Program Committee for TIC 2011Conf. Program Committee for TIC 2011• Conf being organized at short (4 months notice). • Conf. will have three hubs: tech sessions (conf hub),

Software display (exhibition hub) and a tirukkuRaL competition for children (community hub)

• CPC received 130+ abstracts for presentation from many countries across the globe => attests to the growing importance of this conf. series

• CPC selected about 55 papers for oral presentation; full version of these papers available in printed conference proceedings (papers to be made available online at infitt.org after the conference)

• Conf. participants/paper presenters come from 10 countries across the globe (IN, SL, SG, MY, UAE, FR, UK, CH, CA and USA)

• Majority of participants come from academic institutions (senior faculty to young research students), raising hopes for rapid advances in the technology areas through their involvement

Instructions to Paper Presenters, ChairsInstructions to Paper Presenters, Chairs

Tight agenda spread over 3 days Most sessions single track, two talks as remote/video

presentations to check their viability for use in future conferences

Each paper is allocated 30 min, including 5 min reserved for Question-Answers involving the audience

Unless there is a need to show some live demos involving special software, all authors are urged to copy their presentations to the conf. hall laptop well in advance (saves time for all)

Each conf. participant will get a printed copy of the Conf. Book; extra copies can be ordered (500 Rs / 20 US$); PDF will be made available online after the conf.

Inagural Session: 17 June 2011 (09.30 – Inagural Session: 17 June 2011 (09.30 – 10.30)10.30)

09.30- 09.35 Invocation – Prayer Tamil School Students

09.35 – 09.40

Welcome – LOC Co-Chair

Dr. Vasu Renganathan

09.40 – 09.45

Messages – CPC Chair Dr. K. Kalyanasundaram

09.45 – 09.50

Messages - IOC Chair Mr. V.M.S. Kaviarasan

09.50 – 10.00

Welcome –LOC Co-Chair

Prof. H.S. Schiffman

10.00 – 10.10

Welcom – Chair SAS Prof. Daud Ali

10.10 – 10.30

Inagural Talk Prof. M. Anandakrishnan

Inaugural session 17 JuneInaugural session 17 June

Inaugural function featured Prof. Daud Ali, Prof. Harold Schiffman (senior faculties of the local host, viz., South Asian Studies (SAS) Dept of the Univ. of Pennsylvania), Dr. Vasu Renganathan, Dr. K. Kalyanasundaram and Mr. VMS Kaviarasan (Chairs of the Local Org. Committee LOC, Conf. Program Committee and International Org. Committee respectively) and Prof. M. Anandakrishnan (former Chair of INFITT)

Welcoming the conf. participants, Dr. Vasu Renganathan pointed out that the local host (SAS of Upenn) is one of the premier Institution in the US engaged in teaching, research in several Indian languages including Tamil for over 65 years (since 1948!)

Inaugural session 17 JuneInaugural session 17 June

In his welcome speech, Dr. K. Kalyanasundaram pointed out that, in spite of far-off location of the conf. venue (>10000 km), INFITT received over 130 abstracts across the globe, pointing out to the growing interest of Tamil Diaspora in this conference series. 55 papers were accepted for oral presentation at the conference.

TI2011 is truly an “international meet” given that participants come from 10 different countries (India, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia, UK, France, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, Canada and USA).

TI2011 feature three components : a conf. hub (technical sessions), exhibition hub (display of Tamil Softwares) and a community hub (featuring a competition on tirukkuRaL on Saturday)

Inaugural session 17 JuneInaugural session 17 June

The number of participants at the conf. is expected to be around 60, with over two-third coming from various academic institutions across the globe

In his inaugural address, Prof. M. Anandakrishnan expressed his pleasure in noting that, in spite of several ups and downs during the past 11 years, INFITT continues one of its key role in organizing this important conference series. He emphasized the need for more number of youths with background in Information Technology and Tamil to join INFITT to take this organization to the future.

Large scale participation by academic community members attest to the growing interests younger students and researchers take in the development of Tamil computing.

Inaugural session 17 JuneInaugural session 17 June

Prof MA urged that INFITT should make an effort to become a truly professional body in the field of Tamil computing, by taking steps such as promoting technical workshops for young students and peer-review screening of the conf. proceedings.

Tech. Session 1: 17 June 2011 (11.00 – Tech. Session 1: 17 June 2011 (11.00 – 12.00)12.00)

11.00 – 11.30 Tamil : A family of Languages

Prof. Harold S. Schiffman (U Penn)

11.30 – 12.00 Tamil Inscriptions – History and Culture

Prof. Daud Ali(U Penn)

Tech Session I / 17 JuneTech Session I / 17 June

TI2011 started technical sessions with a talk by Prof. Hal Schiffman of the Univ. of Pennsylvania, former Director of Penn Language Center. Prof. Schiffman taught Tamil to the American students for over 35 years and engaged in research on Tamil Linguistics, particularly on the diglossic nature of the Tamil Language

In his talk, Prof. Schiffman pointed out the rich and diverse forms of spoken Tamil seen within India and outside for many centuries, a fact that permits Tamil to be construed as a “family of languages”.

Prof. Schiffman urged that teaching of “spoken Tamil /pEccu tamiz” should be encouraged (and not discouraged as is now in many places).

Tech session 1 / 17 June Tech session 1 / 17 June

Prof. Schiffman pointed out his Tamil group with the active participation of his faculty member Dr Vasu Renganathan, Univ of Pennsylvania has built a top class online Portal for the teaching of Tamil . Penn Tamil Web uses all modern multimedia tools with pedagogically sound Tamil lessons in an integrated manner and the website has been very popular with a high rating.

Prof. Schiffman also announced the publication of a comprehensive Tamil-English verb Dictionary, fruit of his 35+ years of research in Tamil Linguistics. The dictionary is available through the Linguistic Data Consortium LDC of U Penn. Conference participants were given a free CD copy of this important e-resource for Tamil.

Tech session I / 17 June 2011Tech session I / 17 June 2011

The second talk was given by Prof. Daud Ali (Chair of South Asia Studies at U Penn), a professor who has a long standing research interests in South Indian History as deciphered through thousands of Inscriptions (on stones, copper plates and clay pottery) available in many places of India, spanning over two thousand years.

In his talk Prof. Daud Ali explained the advantages of having a fully searchable digital version of the South Indian Inscriptions. Only a small percentage (ca 2000 out of 15000 estampage copies of the recorded inscriptions) have ever been published in print form.

Tech Session 1 / 17 JuneTech Session 1 / 17 June

Prof Daud Ali pointed out that study of inscriptions permit establishment of historical facts on areas such as “dynasty history” and “etymological aspects of Tamil language” (how the language usage has evolved over thousands of years). His own research focus on “mediaeval period” of South Indian History (2000 years)

“Access” to the South Indian Historical resources still is a major problem. Historians like him have to go to archive collections in places like Mysore in India to examine them. Pointing out some of the difficulties, Prof Ali appealed for global scale collaboration of various academic and Govt. institutions within India such as Archeological survey of India (ASI)

Tech. Session 2: 17 June 2011 (13.00 – Tech. Session 2: 17 June 2011 (13.00 – 15.00)15.00)

13.00 – 13.45

Tamil Online Handwriting Recognition / Segmentation of Handwritten words

Prof. A.G. Ramakrishnan (IISc, Bangalore, India)

13.45 – 14.30

Kuralagam (search Engine for Thirukkural) /Popularity based Search Model for Tamil Word Games

Prof. T.V. Geetha (Anna Univ. – Chennai, Guindy)

14.30 – 15.00

Teaching & Learning ethical literature through multimedia

Dr. V.M.S. Andavar (Pachaiyappa’s College, Chennai, India)

Tech Session 2 / 17 JuneTech Session 2 / 17 June

Session 2 started with a video conference presentation of the paper of Prof AG Ramakrishnan of Indian Inst. of Science, Bangalore, India. Ramakrishnan presented his paper sitting in his lab. at Bangalore. It was the maiden effort on the part of the conference organizers to use modern remote presentation options to feature speakers who could not make the trip to the US.

In his talk, Prof Ramakrishnan outlined how some his research efforts in the area of Tamil and Kannada character recognition of printed, handwritten texts along with text-to-speech synthesis of machine-readable texts has enabled thousands of “physically handicapped” persons access specially designed digital library collections and even normal tasks such as accessing emails on computers.

Tech session 2 / 17 JuneTech session 2 / 17 June

In her talk Prof TV Geetha of Anna University –Chennai, India gave an overview of various Tamil Computing related research efforts undertaken at TACOLA (Tamil computing Laboratories) of the Anna Univ. a joint initiative involving two other faculty Prof. Ranjani Parthasarathy and Madhan Karky.

Prof Geetha pointed out that the initiative of TACOLA in offering “summer internship” (opportunities for young students to take up a short 2-3 month research projects in Tamil IT/computing areas) is receiving tremendous support. With the signing of 120 students signing up for this year, future looks bright for young students and faculty contributing more to Tamil computing and Tamil internet research.

Tech Session 2 / 17 JuneTech Session 2 / 17 June

As part of her presentation, Prof. Geetha demonstrated some of the software tools that have been developed at Anna Univ laboratories. Live demos were shown for an online dictionary tool called AGARAADI and a search tool for tirukkuRaL called “kuRaLakam”. There were many live interactions and querying of these online tools by the conference participants. Brief demo. was also shown on a tool CURUKKUPPAI for compaction /shortening of long sentences for use in portable media such as mobile phones.

In the third talk of the session, Dr Va.Mu.Se Andavar (a Tamil professor from Pachaiyappa’s college, Chennai) talked about how multimedia tools can be effectively used to teach Tamil works such as tirukkuRaL, nannool and other works of cangkam period. Here is one area where Tamil professors (with limited computer expertise) can work together with IT Professors (lacking in depth linguistic expertise) to develop tools for a newer version of teaching Tamil works, something usable for people of all age groups.

Tech Session 3 / 17 JuneTech Session 3 / 17 June

Session 3 of the afternoon started with a talk by Dr. Denise DePriso of the Linguistic Data Consortium LDC of the U Penn. LDC is one of the key local U Penn host unit supporting TI2011.

Dr Denise gave an overview of the structure and various activities of the LDC. LDC is a major US-universities led initiative to collect and provide an online corpora linguistic data collections in various world languages. Digital Data is being collected in many areas (from areas of Natural language processing, social history to medicine).

Tamil and Hindi are two Indic languages which have important data collections. One notable item in Tamil is the Tamil-English bilingual Verb Dictionary developed by Prof. Hal Schiffman of the Univ. of Pennsylvania.

Dr. DePriso pointed out that opportunities exist for Indian Institutions to place their digital resources in LDC in a win-win deal for an non-exclusive distribution, given the larger global reach of LDC

Tech session 3 /17 JuneTech session 3 /17 June

Second talk was given by a young IT entrepreneur Mr. Saravanan Kannan engaged in the development of software for teaching of Tamil language to young children growing outside India (north America in particular). Tamil Digest.com (one of the sponsors) has published a series of 16 multi-media based Tamil course lessons at beginner and intermediate learning levels.

The third talk of session 3 featured another Professor of the Univ. of Pennsylvania who is making great advances in developing novel approaches to teach online courses. Prof. Ed Dixon explained in great detail how he teaches a small group of 8-10 students placed in various cities within and outside USA collectively in an online based summer course – first course in German.

Prof. Dixon explained how development of a good online course is a challenging task both for the faculty and the students as well. The course involve regular meeting of students with the professor for online sessions to learn the German language.

Tech Session 3 / 17 JuneTech Session 3 / 17 June

Online course sessions of Dixon involve in addition to live interaction with the teacher, chat session amongst the students and instant exchanges in social forums like Facebook.

Day’s programs ended with an excellent vocal concert (a hybrid of Indian classical music supported by western playback support) presented by a U Penn student group called “Penn Sargam” followed by excellent South Indian Dinner !

Tech. Session 4A: 18 June 2011 (09.00 – Tech. Session 4A: 18 June 2011 (09.00 – 10.45)10.45)

09.00 – 09.45

Tamil Video Retrieval and Tamil Document Summarization

Prof. T. Mala (Anna Univ. – Chennai, Guindy)

09.45 – 10.15

On Emotion Detection from Tamil Text

Ms. Giruba Beulah (Anna Univ.- Chennai, Guindy)

10.15 – 10.45

இணை�ய வழித் தமழ்ப் ப�டங்கள்

Dr. M. Elangovan (Govt. Arts College, Puducherry, India)

Tech. Session 4B: 18 June 2011 (09.00 – Tech. Session 4B: 18 June 2011 (09.00 – 10.45)10.45)

09.00 – 09.45

தொம�ழிதொபயர்ப்புக் கணைலய ல்

அகரா�த#ய ன்பயன்ப�டு

Mr. S. Ilangkumaran (Sultan Idris Educational Univ., KL, Malaysia)

09.45 – 10.15

க�னிவழித் தமழ் தொம�ழிய�ய்வ ல்

தொப�ருள் மயக்கம்

Dr. L. Sundaram (SRM University, Chennai, India)

10.15 – 10.45

A package for Learning Negation in Tamil

Prof. G. Singaravelu (Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, India

Tech. Session 5A: 18 June 2011 (11.00 – Tech. Session 5A: 18 June 2011 (11.00 – 13.00)13.00)11.00 – 11.30

Mapping Language change in Tamil Corpus and Computer Database Making

Dr. A. Murugaiyan (EPHE. UMR, Paris, France)

11.30 – 12.00

Language Ideology and Technology

Prof. E. Annamalai (Univ Chicago, IL, USA)

12.00 – 12.30

Tamil Literature from Sangam Period to Modern Period

Dr. Vasu Renganathan (Univ Pennsylvania, PA, USA)

12.30 – 13.00

க�னிய ல் ரோரா�மன் வராவடிவ

ஒலிதொபயர்ப்பு

Prof. Radha Chellappan (Bharathidasan Univ, Trichi, India)