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#MerlionChallenge

Dr Suzy J Stylessuzyjstyles@toot.community
2023-02-20

Baseline system + leaderboards are up for #MerlionChallenge untangling complex code-mixed speech. Which #ML #DeepLearning #SpeechProc system will do the best job on complex language use in the wild? 👀

TWO TEAMS have already beaten the baseline for Language ID:
🎉Lingua_Lumos (Closed)
🎉UNSW_Signal_Processing (Open)

There’s still time to join the challenge and prep your paper for our special session at #Interspeech2023

toot.community/@suzyjstyles/10

Title text: MERLIon CCS Leaderboards: Task 1 Subtitle: The MERLIon CCS Challenge is a speech processing challenge for Interspeech 2023. Task 1: Language Identification. All participating teams must submit a model to Task 1 (Closed). Task 2 is optional. *+ + DID YOU KNOW? + + With the body of a mermaid and the head of a lion, the Merlion is a national icon of Singapore. * Just as the Merlion is a mix of different creatures, the code-switched child-directed speech in this challenge is a mix of different languages Left panel: MERLIon CCS Task 1 Closed Codalab leaderboard First place: Lingua_Lumos. Left panel: MERLIon CCS Task 2 Open Codalab leaderboard First place: UNSW_Signal_Processing
Dr Suzy J Stylessuzyjstyles@toot.community
2023-02-02

Have you ever seen auto-generated subtitles turn to mush because they couldn’t handle a speaker’s accent or figure out what language they’re speaking after a switch?

The #MerlionChallenge for #Interspeech23 tests how well teams can build a language detection system for Code-Switching in >300 Zoom recordings.

Help build robust systems for multilingualism by joining the challenge or sharing with #ML #DeepLearning #SpeechProc friends 💪🏼💪🏽💪🏿

toot.community/@suzyjstyles/10

Dr Suzy J Stylessuzyjstyles@toot.community
2023-01-27

Ever seen auto-generated subtitles turn to mush because they couldn’t handle a speaker’s accent or figure out what language they’re speaking after a switch?

The #MerlionChallenge at #Interspeech23 tests how well teams can build a language detection system for real-world Code-Switching between English and Mandarin Chinese in >300 Zoom recordings.

Join the challenge or boost to help build more robust speech systems for multilingualism 💪🏼💪🏽💪🏿

toot.community/@suzyjstyles/10

Dr Suzy J Stylessuzyjstyles@toot.community
2023-01-19

Bonus

✨✨DID YOU KNOW?✨✨With the body of a mermaid and the head of a lion, the Merlion is a national icon of Singapore.

✨Just as the Merlion is a mix of different creatures, the code-switched child-directed speech in the #MerlionChallenge is a mix of different languages✨

(apologies for cross posting)

Dr Suzy J Stylessuzyjstyles@toot.community
2023-01-19

Most AI speech processing systems are developed using samples of monolingual speech between adults. #WEIRDbias

We hope the #MerlionChallenge at @Interspeech 2023 pushes the frontiers of how automated systems handle the diverse kinds of #translanguaging we see in the world 🌍

If you want to see better tools for #LangDev #Multilingualism #DiverseVoices and #GlobalLanguages then help us ✨boost✨ these posts can reach all the lovely #SpeechProc and #CognitiveScience folks!

Dr Suzy J Stylessuzyjstyles@toot.community
2023-01-19

What makes this a good #AI challenge?
👉Natural code switching (no shuffled segments)
👉Accented English & Mandarin
👉Precision human annotation
👉Various far field mics (laptops/tablets)
👉Internet audio (Zoom)
👉Adults speaking to kids

#MerlionChallenge #Interspeech

Dr Suzy J Stylessuzyjstyles@toot.community
2023-01-19

Participating teams have a chance to submit their papers at our special session at #Interspeech 2023 in Dublin (yes, Ireland) ☘️

You can find out more about the #MerlionChallenge or sign up to take part by taking a look at our shiny new website!

sites.google.com/view/merlion-

Dr Suzy J Stylessuzyjstyles@toot.community
2023-01-19

For the #MerlionChallenge at #Interspeech we’ll be asking teams to train a #SpeechProc / #AI system that can guess which language is which (Task 1: Language ID) and when (Task 2: Language Diarization)!

👉Challenge audio is Zoom recordings with English and/or Mandarin Chinese
👉Audio for development matches audio for evaluation 😗👌

Website: MERLIon CCS Interspeech 2023 A graph showing density plots for total duration of speech in milliseconds. Mandarin and English shown separately. Density plot for Development set almost perfectly overlaps Density plot for Evaluation set for both languages. Overall there IS a wide range of English higher average English speech duration.
Dr Suzy J Stylessuzyjstyles@toot.community
2023-01-19

Our annotation protocol is documented in the BELA transcription conventions. The Wiki includes instructions for how to do multi-tier multilingual transcriptions using Elan (free!)

BELA Con:
blipntu.github.io/belacon/

For the #MerlionChallenge we hold some info back

MERLIon CCS Interspeech 2023 A visual waveform of speech has 3 layers of annotations: Utterance (text in English and Mandarin); Language (English | Mandarin | English); Translation (text in English only) Figure 1. Transcription is done in ELAN. Transcribers were given special instructions to place the start-stop boundaries carefully both at the level of speaker turn, taking note to include sounds at the edge of words (such as fricatives at the end), and at the level of language information, taking note to include all word boundaries in each respective language in the event of language change. For the purposes of this challenge, transcriptions and translations will not be provided.
Dr Suzy J Stylessuzyjstyles@toot.community
2023-01-19

All of the #MerlionChallenge audio recordings were collected via Zoom calls, where parents narrated a wordless picturebook to their children (link to an old thread on the bird site)

The book is free to download, and can be used for any language or combo!

twitter.com/suzyjstyles/status

Dr Suzy J Stylessuzyjstyles@toot.community
2023-01-19

The #MerlionChallenge is a 🌏 collab between psycholinguists at NTU in Singapore (me, Victoria Chua, Fei Ting Woon) and Engineers at JHU, TUD and NTU (Leibny Paola GarciaPerera, Sanjeev Khudanpur, Justin Dauwels, Hexin Liu, Andy Khong) for #Interspeech 2023

interspeech2023.org

Dr Suzy J Stylessuzyjstyles@toot.community
2023-01-19

I’m sure I have a bunch of #Multilingual #LangDev, #SpeechProc #NLP and #CogSci friends over here 🦣

We’ve prepped >30hrs of our English/Mandarin code-switched child directed speech for the #MerlionChallenge at this year’s INTERSPEECH
>300 files, >100 voices 🙀 (+ training data)

We’re looking for speech systems that can figure out which language is spoken when!

The #MerlionChallenge will see whose system does the best job 💪🏼

Join or help us boost the message: sites.google.com/view/merlion-

Title: MERLIon CCS Challenge Multilingual Everyday Recordings - Language Identification on Code-Switched Child-Directed Speech A cartoon of a parent talking to a child with text in English and Mandarin, beside a figure of the waveforms of speech. English is marked in Blue and Mandarin Chinese in Orange. The story is about an orangutan in a thunderstorm.

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