Special Session: Recent Highlights in SLT

Goal

The proposed special session aims to introduce an “SLT Recent Highlights” session as an integral part of IWSLT. The session intends to provide an overview of the state of the art in Spoken Language Translation (SLT) research by presenting to the IWSLT participants focused reviews on recent developments and new/emerging trends. Additionally, a short and lively discussion, involving both presenters and the audience, may follow the presentations. We believe this initiative will contribute to a better understanding of the current landscape of SLT research and foster collaboration and exchange of ideas within the IWSLT community.

Themes

The special session will focus on hot topics, emerging trends, and promising solutions, with an eye on taking stock of today’s situation rather than on the history of research in the field. The recent highlights will therefore delve into various aspects of the most recently published research, offering insights into the latest developments and open challenges. Focused reviews on a range of SLT topics are welcome, including but not limited to:

  • Offline SLT
  • Simultaneous SLT
  • Subtitling
  • Dubbing
  • Multilingual or multi-task SLT
  • Low-Resource SLT
  • Any other topics relevant to SLT research

Format

The format of the session will include oral presentations by students and researchers who will share their highlights on the designated topics. Optionally, a brief interactive discussion may follow each presentation, allowing presenters to engage with the audience. The overall duration of the session is expected to be 2 hours, providing ample time for in-depth presentations and potential discussions.

Submission

We envisage two modalities to participate (archival and non-archival):

  • Abstract + Video (non-archival): Authors submit an abstract along with a video of a maximum of 15 minutes in which they present their review. Upon acceptance, based on the topic’s relevance and the presentation’s effectiveness, the authors present their review to the special session.
  • 4-8 Page Paper (archival): Authors submit the SLT Recent Highlights as a special track of the IWSLT Scientific paper submissions. A standard review will be conducted and, upon paper acceptance, the reviews will be included in the proceedings. The authors will present their reviews during the Special Session together with non-archival submissions.

The deadline of the Special Session follows the standard deadlines for system description and research papers that can be found here.

Please submit the long or short papers, or the abstract using the IWSLT’24 Paper Submission portal on SoftConf. Video links should be emailed to the organizers using the abstract/video title as the email subject.

Selection Criteria

The selection of papers and presentations will be based on the relevance of the topic, and the quality of the paper or presentation. Onsite presentations will be preferred.

Organizers

Sara Papi (spapi@fbk.eu) and Marco Gaido (mgaido@fbk.eu) - Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy