Teanga Seminar - Dr Éric Le Ferrand - Low-resource is not the only problem: Advancing Speech Recognition in Field Linguistics

Hi all,

The next Teanga Seminar will take place on June 10th at 5PM (GMT+1) and 
will feature Dr Éric Le Ferrand of Boston College. All are welcome to 
attend:

https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/teanga-seminar-series-tickets-912720851637

**Abstract:**

The term "low-resource" often implies a scarcity of data, particularly 
when compared to well-resourced languages like English or French. 
However, a vast majority of the world's languages, considered 
low-resource, offer rich linguistic diversity and untapped potential. 
Among these languages, the ones labelled as endangered are primarily 
studied by documentary and descriptive linguists who generate essential 
data for building speech technologies. This data encompasses a myriad of 
challenges that extend beyond data scarcity. In this presentation, I 
will try to unveil what field linguistics data means, what challenges 
and opportunities can be explored from a typological perspective and 
what kind of processes can be applied to this data to support language 
description work.

**About the Speaker:**

Dr Éric Le Ferrand <https://sites.google.com/view/ericleferrand/>is a 
post-doctoral researcher at Boston College 
<https://www.bc.edu/content/bc-web/schools/morrissey/departments/computer-science/about.html>specializing 
in computational linguistics and automatic speech recognition for 
underrepresented languages. His work resides at the crossroads of 
linguistics, technology, and community engagement, reflecting a 
dedication to advancing the understanding and application of 
computational linguistics in linguistically diverse settings. Dr 
Ferrand's academic journey began with a Bachelor's degree in Italian 
language, culture, and literature fromUniversité Rennes 2 
<https://www.univ-rennes2.fr/>, France. Building on this foundation, he 
pursued a Master's degree in Computational Linguistics at Université 
Grenoble Alpes <https://www.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/> in France, followed 
by a Ph.D. in Computational Linguistics from PhD in Australia.

After completing the PhD, Dr. Ferrand continued to make significant 
contributions to the field through a postdoctoral position at Université 
d'Orléans and his current role at Boston College. He maintains a 
specific focus on automatic speech processing for low-resource languages 
and a keen interest in field linguistics data. His research underscores 
a commitment to overcoming the challenges faced by linguists working in 
diverse and underrepresented linguistic contexts.

The Teanga Seminar Series is supported by the Insight Centre for Data 
Analytics.

Regards,

John

-- 
John P. McCrae
(he/him; #startsWithAName John (rhymes with "gone") McCrae (rhymes with "hay") /dʒɒn mækɹeɪ/)
Assistant Professor - SFI Insight Centre for Data Analytics, Data Science Institute & Computer Science, University of Galway