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<\/span><\/figure>\nIn the previous part you said that your lab is open to anyone interested. How\u00a0many people did come to you last year? To whom can one contact to get to the lab? Which\u00a0level of knowledge needed?<\/strong><\/p>\n A lot of people come through our lab. We work with universities, and in 2014 there were 7 diploma theses, 2 term papers, 13 students undergoing practical training.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n On the\u00a0average, 30 people are those who get practical tasks from their universities and come to us to solve it. The laboratory staff is 15-18 people.<\/span><\/p>\n We visit different schools, conferences, and many people know us. Geography of conferences in 2014 and 2015 includes\u00a0Kiev, Tallinn, Belarus, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Italy, Moscow. Some time ago\u00a0a specialist from France visited us. He had\u00a0meetings with students in BSU and BSUIR,\u00a0where he had the opportunity to give lectures and conduct workshops.<\/p>\n We get more and more invitations. Sometimes it is\u00a0hard to plan, because we cannot tell what will happen next week: invitations and meetings may appear any time. We are trying to be open.<\/p>\n It is very good. Moreover, it\u00a0correlates\u00a0with the goal of NLProc.by: spreading\u00a0of knowledge and the development of industry in Belarus.<\/strong><\/p>\n Who else in our country is engaged in computational linguistics?<\/strong><\/p>\n There are such people. For example, our leader, Boris Lobanov raised a whole school in Belarus, his students are A.B.Karnevskaya, B.V.Panchanka, A.S.Rylov, T.V.Levkovskaya, G.V.Losik, L .I.Tsyrulnik, A.G.Davydav, I.E.Heydarav, M.P.Degtsyarov, V.U.Kiselev and many others. We are the fifth generation of the school. Some of them are related to the well-known company Sakrament<\/a><\/strong>; someone \u2013\u00a0to a branch of the speech information center. Our difference is that we are working constantly considering our educational goal.<\/p>\n We deal with the compilation method of synthesis in contrast to the known unit selection method based on allophones. It\u00a0is cheaper, worth 1-2 man a year to create the\u00a0first version, and it can be improved indefinitely. Unit Selection\u00a0method takes\u00a0about 10 man a year to develop. Apart from\u00a0the synthesis, we also work with speech recognition.<\/p>\n Now we are adding it to mobile robots.<\/p>\n That is really interesting, would you tell us more?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n Together with the sector of robotics we are working on robots that speak Belarusian. One of them was demonstrated at TIBO few years ago.<\/p>\n Where can one use them?<\/strong><\/p>\n For example, in education, or home robots that can recognize commands from man and other robots.<\/p>\n At what stage the work is?<\/strong><\/p>\n Working together with the sector of robotics, we have added the first version of the synthesis. It seems that the robot is now dismantled, but there is a video of its work. We try to add speech and hearing as well. Especially we are working on the problem of electronic hearing, because during the movement of the robot there are sounds from the environment, which are not commands, and it is important to distinguish them.<\/p>\n Thank you, that’s very interesting, we are waiting for a demonstration robot who speaks Belarusian on some of the meetings of our community. The next question would be: what, in your opinion, are\u00a0the current trends of development in computational linguistics in our country and the world?<\/strong><\/p>\n Yes, it is necessary to differentiate, because a lot is done in Belarus to the world, but the Belarusians do not know that. Recently I have learned that some companies here make products for Samsung for named entity recognition \u2013 it is a good result.<\/p>\n Of course, our\u00a0market is small.<\/p>\n For example, I can name IHS (former Invention Machine), Sakrament, several other offshore companies, Yandex. All of them are engaged in search and \u0456nformation retrieval.<\/p>\n By the way, recently, the latter company has made its implementation of Tomita Parser<\/a>\u00a0open source. And the last question.\u00a0T<\/strong>hose who are interested in this field \u2013 how can they start their career?<\/b><\/p>\n We have accumulated base of laboratory works, including those on the synthesis. Also, many materials on NooJ<\/a><\/span> can be found on our website or website of the laboratory prototypes.\u00a0<\/b>But the practice is the most reliable way. I advise you to look for any open source project, work there and get help of\u00a0those who have experience. About the books: there are a lot of them, some are\u00a0worse, some are better. But the practice is\u00a0the best!<\/p>\n Thank you for the interview.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Thank you.<\/p>\n Original text:<\/strong> http:\/\/nlproc.by\/post\/120085283115<\/a><\/p>\n![\"image\"](\"http:\/\/41.media.tumblr.com\/c4462e9a212b7ac0a4b27a124a435a77\/tumblr_inline_np1pjh0Qxj1ss6tkt_500.png\")
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