Mission

1. Basic research on Human Language Technologies

2. Collaboration with local/oversea research organizations

3. Supporting researcher/developer/user communities

4. Developing and making use of Human Language Technology products

Introduction

Human Language Technology Laboratory (HLT) pursues multidisciplinary researches and development in human spoken and written language technologies. Its primary objective is the facilitation of human-machine and human-human communication such as machine translation, information retrieval, speech processing.

Spoken-written language is an indispensable media for human communication; it is though rich of complexity, variety, and ancestral sophistication. It plays an important role as intellectual and cultural heritage differing in regions. Human language processing is therefore an important field of research whose results can be widely applied to many other areas. It narrows down language barrier while boosts up equality and distribution of information access.

Research of language processing technology in many countries had been persistently conducted, and most of them centered on major languages such as English, European languages, Japanese, and Chinese. Many applications were launched, e.g. information retrieval on the Internet, speech recognition and synthesis in mobile phones, automatic translation in dialogs, and assistive facilities for the handicapped. Participation to these new technologies is unavoidable in the borderless information world. As a result, the crucial mission of the laboratory is devoted to research and development of Thai language processing technology.

Structure

1. 1. Speech Processing Group

- Automatic speech recognition (ASR): Converting speech to text

- Text-to-speech synthesis (TTS): Generating speech from text

- Speaker recognition: Identifying and verifying persons by their voices

- Pronunciation assessment (PA): Assessing the language speaking ability

- Interactive voice response (IVR): Infrastructure for automatic call centers

1. 2. Text Processing Group

- Electronic dictionary: Public service and engine of electronic dictionary

- Machine translation (MT): Translating text among languages

- Text summarization: Automatically summarizing text

- Speech translation: Translating speech among languages

- Ontology and knowledge engineering: Acquiring and managing text knowledge

1. 3. Information Retrieval Group

- Information search and retrieval: Searching and retrieving information by keywords

- Question answering: Automatically answering natural questions

- Sentimental analysis: Automatically filtering and polarizing social messages

Current Projects

1. 1. Speech-to-speech Translation: Phase II (2010-2012)

Publicizing a travel-domain English-Thai speech translation system

Collaboration Universal Speech Translation Advanced Research (U-STAR) consortium with 15 Asian research institutes

1. 2. English Enhancement Tools for Thai Learners (2010-2012)

Investigating open-source tools for English learning especially for Thai learners

Collaboration Asian English Speech Corpus Project (AESOP) hosted by Waseda University (Japan), Thammasat Klongluang Withayakhom School

1. 3. The Development on Service Grid Infrastructure (2011-2012)

Developing an infrastructure for Bangkok Service Grid Operational Center

Collaboration NICT and Kyoto University (Japan)

1. 4. Social Web Content Mining System (2011-2012)

Web 2.0 content management and opinion mining

Collaboration Pantip.com, Ministry of ICT

1. 5. MinSpeak (2008-2011)

Semantic keyboard design with Thai extension

Collaboration Srisangwal School

1. 6. IVR for Travel Information System: Phase IV (2011-2012)

Enabling Thai voice interface in telephone-based travel information services

Collaboration Traffic Pro FM91, Traffic Radio Society FM99.5, Intelligent Transport System Association Thailand

1. 7. A Framenet Approach for Dictionary Development (2010-2012)

Extending the electronic dictionary to Framenet for semantic-based NLP applications

1. 8. Benchmark for Enhancing the Standard of Thai Language Processing (2010-2012)

Systematizing and developing Thai language resources and fundamental tools

Collaboration Computer Engineering Kasetsart University, Faculty of Arts Chulalongkorn University

1. 9. Pronunciation Assessment Software for Orally Surgical Patients (2011)

Developing a pronunciation assessment software for orally surgical patients

Collaboration Dentistry Faculty Chulalongkorn University

10. Applying TVIS for a Self-management Support System for Diabetes Patients Over Telephone (2011)

Developing telephone and web services for diabetes patients self-care

Collaboration King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital

11. Developing Knowledge as a Service using Semantic-based Knowledge Management Tools (2011-2013)

Developing software tools supporting knowledge acquisition and service applications from existing organization IT infrastructure and enhancing knowledge accessibility

Collaboration Orchid Associations in Thailand

Achievements

Key Prototypes/Services

1. PARSIT: an English-Thai machine translation system offering online free-of-charge translation services
2. LEXITRON: an electronic English-Thai and Thai-English dictionary offering both online service and offline application
3. VAJA: a high-fidelity Thai speech synthesizer offering both online service and offline application
4. ISPEECH: a Thai speech recognizer offering both online service and offline application
5. SANSARN: an intelligent search engine particularized for Thai documents
6. ABDUL: an open-domain question answering system serviced on instant messengers
7. DUPDIP: an intelligent plagiarism detection system for Thai documents
8. Corpora for text and speech processing
   1. ORCHID: a part-of-speech annotated text corpus
   2. LOTUS: a corpus for large vocabulary Thai continuous speech recognition
   3. BEST: a large word-boundary tagged text corpus

Awards

• ECTI-CON 2007: 1 BEST Paper Award
• ECTI-CON 2008: 2 BEST Paper Awards
• ACM Conference on Multimedia 2009: Grand Challenge HP Honorable Mention
• Thailand ICT Awards 2010 Runner up – ABDUL System
• TRIDI Telecom Innovation Award 2010 – TVIS System
• Council of Engineers Award 2011 – TVIS Alert System

Patents/Publications

• 14 patents pending since 2006
• 6 publications in ISI journals since 2006

Website

http://www.hlt.nectec.or.th