Speech research @ UoA presents …
Māori Speech Technology Workshop
July 2 2021
Building 401, Room 311, City campus,
The University of Auckland
9 am to 4 pm
Registrations are closed for this event.
An opportunity for undergraduate and postgraduate students to learn about te reo Māori speech and language technology development from industry experts and academics.
This event has been sponsored by Papa Reo and Te Hiku Media.
ABOUT THE WORKSHOP
Kia ora koutou katoa
“Hey Siri, can you take me to Kaitaia?”
Siri: “Which Car tyre?” 
We can see that speech technology like Siri/Alexa/Google Assistant do not work well for all languages!
Are you an undergraduate/postgraduate student who is interested to learn how Siri/Alexa or similar talking technology understands you and responds?
Wouldn’t it be cool to develop a “Siri” that says our placenames correctly?
Wait — What if you can help develop speech technology in te reo Māori?
If you are excited to learn more about what to do to develop speech and language technology in te reo Māori – this workshop is the best place to start!
Speech technology development is happening at a very fast pace.
Our language is our taonga. Our language-knowledge when combined with our expertise in technology can help create useful speech technology in our languages.
Ko te hui Mātauranga Pūtaiao Reo Māori he wāhi mā ngā tauira kia ako i ngā āhuatanga katoa e pā ana ki tēnei kaupapa, arā ko te āta tātari i te reo, ko ngā taputapu pūmawana, ko ngā tikanga tiaki raraunga reo Māori, ko ngā huarahi hoki kia kōkiri i tēnei kaupapa whakahirahira ki mua.
The Māori speech technology workshop is an opportunity for undergraduate and postgraduate students to learn about various aspects of the Māori language, tools used to analyse it, speech technology development and data sovereignty for the purposes of developing speech technology in te reo Māori.
Ko ngā kaikōrero nei, ko ngā tohunga mō te kaupapa, ko ngā kaimahi i ngā whare wānanga, i ngā kamupene pūmanawa, i ngā reo irirangi, i whea ake, i whea ake.
Technologists, industry experts and academics will be delivering the various sessions.
We also have Travel Grants for atendees travelling from outside – Auckland region. Read below for more information.
HOW TO PARTICIPATE
Registrations are closed now.
Be part of the audience and listen to all the cool research happening in Māori speech technology.
TRAVEL GRANTS
Are you travelling from outside the Auckland region for the Workshop? If yes – Te Hiku Media and Papa Reo have offered 10 Travel Grants to support you.
ACCOMODATION
If you wish to arrive a day before the workshop, we will provide accomodation at the Te Aka Matua ki Te Pou Hawaiki (The UoA Epsom Campus marae).
ORGANISING TEAM
July
The sessions will be conducted in a computer lab.
So, there will be hands-on sessions and opportunities to try out all the cool things you learn!
09:00 am – Welcome & Introduction
09:30 am – Orthography of te reo Māori
10:00 am – Speech production, Phonetics, Challenges in Māori phonetics
10:30 am – Morning tea
10:45 am – Speech acoustics and speech features, Speech processing tools
12:30 pm – Lunch
01:30 am – Data sovereignty, Iwi-specific and pan-iwi speech and language technology
02:45 pm – Afternoon tea & Concluding remarks
03:00 pm – Language modelling, Machine learning
LOCATION
ORGANISING TEAM
Dr. Catherine Watson, Dr. Peter Keegan, Jesin James, Isabella Shields.
Contact: Jesin James – jesin.james@auckland.ac.nz
Our Support
