Language Technology Education and Research in Iceland
Until recently, no institution in Iceland offered any education in Language Technology. That changed in the fall of 2002, when the University of Iceland launched a new Master's program in Language Technology. This is a two year interdisciplinary program (120 ECTS credits), and the students have either a BA degree in the humanities (languages and linguistics) or a BSc degree computer science. Students with background in the humanities have to take at least 30 ECTS credits in computer science (courses in Programming (Java and C++), Mathematical Structures for Computer Science, and Database Theory). Students with a background in computer science have to take at least 30 ECTS credits in Icelandic language and linguistics (courses in Phonetics, Phonology, Morphology, and Syntax). Furthermore, both groups of students take obligatory courses in Natural Language Processing and Speech Technology, at least 30 ECTS credits. The students can also take graduate courses in the Department of Icelandic, the Department of Mathematics, the Department of Computer Science, and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. They also have the possibility of taking individual courses at foreign universities. To get their degree, the students must write a Master's thesis (30 ECTS credits), which is supposed to be done in cooperation with a research institute or a private company working on language technology. 8 students enrolled in the program the first year, and 5 the second year. The majority of the students have had BA degrees in languages (mostly Icelandic and English), but a few have had BSc (or even MSc) degrees in Computer Science. It has been very valuable for them to have the opportunity to take courses in the other Nordic countries - first GSLT courses, with support from GENST-NET, and later NGSLT courses. Three of our students also took part in a PhD course held by the Nordic Treebank Network in March 2004. Up to now, two students have graduated from the program - the first in the fall of 2004, and the second in February 2006. Due to lack of funding and lack of qualified teachers, no new students have been admitted to the program in the last two years. However, introductory courses in language technology are being offered at the undergraduate level. We are now examining the possibilities of restructuring and relaunching the program as a joint program with the School of Science and Engineering at the Reykjavik University. In 2001, the Icelandic Government launched a special Language Technology Program, with the aim of supporting instutions and companies to build basic resources for Icelandic LT work. This initiative has resulted in several projects which are either finished or well underway. The University of Iceland and leading companies in the telecommunication and software industry joined their efforts to build an isolated word speech recognizer and a text-to-speech system for Icelandic. This was done in cooperation with ScanSoft (now Nuance), and the product is already on the market. The Institute of Lexicography at the University of Iceland has built a full-form morphological database for Icelandic. This database, which is constantly being enlarged, now contains more than 200,000 lexemes and all their inflectional forms. The Institute of Lexicography and the University have also been evaluating and adapting PoS taggers for Icelandic. At present, the Institute of Lexicography is building a balanced tagged corpus of 25 million words of Icelandic text. A private software company, Frisk Software, has built an HPSG-based syntactic parser, which is meant to be used in a grammar checker for Icelandic. The students in the Language Technology Program at the University have had the opportunity to participate in most of these projects. More information on language technology research, resources and projects in Iceland can be found at the website of the Icelandic Documentation Centre for Language Technology - http://www.tungutaekni.is/english.html. * Status_and_prospects.doc: The Status and Prospects of Icelandic Language Technology (Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson, 2005)