WebinarThursday 15 July 2021
12:00pm – 1:15pm
AI and the Ainu Language
This event will start at 12pm BST (GMT+1)
Organised by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
Fully bookedAI is becoming ever more relevant in supporting the preservation of endangered languages, including Ainu, because of its capabilities for language transcription, translation, and search/retrieval. The Ainu language has traditionally been passed down orally through traditional folk tales. While it is recognised by UNESCO as critically endangered, a large stock of oral interviews has been actively recorded since the late 20th century in an attempt to preserve the rich folklore and cultural heritage of the Ainu. Nevertheless, much of this has not yet been fully transcribed nor properly archived.
In this webinar chaired by Professor Roger K. Moore, Professor Tatsuya Kawahara, a leading researcher at Kyoto University, talked about his latest project developing automatic speech recognition and synthesis technologies to assist the preservation of the Ainu language. He was joined by special guest Sachiko Kibata (90), who shared her thoughts as one of the very few remaining speakers of the Ainu language, and presented some traditional Ainu folklore.
Written Summary, AI and the Ainu Language, PDFA video of the event can be viewed below:
A short summary of the event can be found via the link below, located on the Foundation’s Facebook page:
Short Event SummaryAbout the contributors
Professor Tatsuya Kawahara
Professor Tatsuya Kawahara is a Professor and the Dean of the School of Informatics, Kyoto University. He has published more than 400 papers on speech recognition, spoken language processing, and spoken dialogue systems. He has been conducting several projects including the automatic transcription system for the Japanese Parliament (Diet), and autonomous android ERICA. He received the Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) in 2012. He was a General Chair of IEEE Automatic Speech Recognition and Understanding Workshop (ASRU 2007). He also served as an Editorial Board Member of Elsevier Journal of Computer Speech & Language (CSL) and IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech & Language Processing (TASLP). He is the current Editor-in-Chief of APSIPA Transactions on Signal & Information Processing (ATSIP). He is a Board Member of APSIPA and ISCA, and a Fellow of IEEE.
Sachiko Kibata
Sachiko Kibata is one of the few surviving speakers of the Ainu language. Born in Nukibetsu, Biratori, on 23 July 1930, she is now 90. She began serious study of the Ainu language in 1990 under the guidance of the late Kayano Shigeru. To train her successors, she has been working as a language teacher at the Ainu Language School in Nibutani, Biratori, since 1998. She has held sessions demonstrating Ainu language and folklore at the Nibutani Ainu Culture Museum and across Japan, playing a major role in disseminating and raising awareness of Ainu culture. In recognition of these efforts, she received the Award for Promoting Ainu Culture in 2012, the Hokkaido Culture Award in 2018, and the Cultural Affairs Commissioner’s Commendation in 2019.
Professor Roger K. Moore (Chair)
Professor Roger K. Moore (Chair) is Professor of Spoken Language Processing at the University of Sheffield, and also holds Visiting Chairs at Bristol Robotics Laboratory and University College London Psychology & Language Sciences. He has over 40 years’ experience in Speech Technology R&D and, although an engineer by training, much of his research has been based on insights from human speech perception and production. As Head of the UK Government’s Speech Research Unit from 1985 to 1999, he was responsible for the development of the Aurix range of speech technology products and the subsequent formation of 20/20 Speech Ltd. He was President of the European/International Speech Communication Association from 1997 to 2001, General Chair for INTERSPEECH-2009 and ISCA Distinguished Lecturer during 2014-15. In 2017 he organised the first international workshop on ‘Vocal Interactivity in-and-between Humans, Animals and Robots (VIHAR)’. He is the current Editor-in-Chief of Computer Speech & Language and in 2016 he was awarded the LREC Antonio Zampoli Prize for “Outstanding Contributions to the Advancement of Language Resources & Language Technology Evaluation within Human Language Technologies” and in 2020 he was given the International Speech Communication Association Special Service Medal for “Service in the establishment, leadership and international growth of ISCA”.