Gender stereotypes in Greek children's dictionaries

<p>This article describes a small-scale study to assess the extent of gender stereotypes and the ways in which these are represented in Modern Greek dictionaries for primary school children. The recent boom in Greek lexicography has led to an increase in the publication of children's dictionaries. At the same time, discussions concerning gender issues and gender bias in language have been gaining considerable interest both in academia and wider society, reflecting a broader international trend. This research was based on the assumption that children's dictionaries provide an environment where such issues are reflected. This hypothesis was examined on a sample corpus of six dictionaries that are in current use, based on three parameters: the inclusion of the feminine form of the headword in noun entries denoting human referents, the portrayal of gender in usage examples, and the representation of gender in pictorial illustrations.</p&gt

From mythos to logos: A bilingual thesaurus tailored to meet users’ needs within the ecosystem of cultural tourism

Thesauri have long been recognized as valuable structured resources aiding Information Retrieval systems. A thesaurus provides a precise and controlled vocabulary which serves to coordinate data indexing and retrieval. The paper presents a bilingual Greek and English specialized thesaurus that is being developed as the backbone of a platform aimed at enhancing and enriching the cultural experiences of visitors in Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, Greece. The cultural component of the intended platform comprises textual data, images of artifacts and living entities (animals and plants in the area), as well as audio and video. The thesaurus covers the domains of Archaeology, Literature, Mythology, and Travel; therefore, it can be viewed as a set of inter-linked thesauri. Where applicable, terms and names in the database are also geo-referenced

Mythological itineraries along the Western Silk Road: finding myths in visits to Eastern Macedonia and Thrace today

<p>This paper presents work within the framework of the R&D project "Mythological Routes in Eastern Macedonia and Thrace", which showcases the cultural wealth of the region of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace as the basis for the development of the tourism industry. The starting point of the project is the systematic recording, mapping, and promotion of ancient myths that are, in some way, related to this region. The area is of key commercial value, as it forms the north-eastern part of Greece, bordering two countries: Bulgaria and Turkey. In addition, it has always been an important part of the Western Silk Road map, with major centres such as Soufli, and Alexandroupolis. Apart from its geopolitical and economic significance, the area has substantial historical and cultural value, as it has been inhabited continuously since the Prehistoric era. It also boasts a variety of diverse landscapes and ecosystems as well as a rare long-lasting mosaic of different cultures. This project marks the first dedicated collection of myths and mythological references concentrating exclusively on this geographical region. At another level, the project allows the creation of personalized itineraries in the area for the support of the full tourist experience through a website and a mobile application (<a href="https://mythotopia.eu/">https://mythotopia.eu/</a>). Starting from the promotion of the mythological identity of the region, its past and present are connected to enhance its tourist and cultural elements. Visitors of the region will enjoy the possibility of designing their own itineraries based on a variety of personal criteria, be them mythological, archaeological, cultural, natural, gastronomic, recreational, etc. In addition, the project has developed a specially designed educational application for the pedagogical utilization of the research outcomes in secondary and higher education</p&gt

User Evaluation of the MOBOT Rollator Type Robotic Mobility Assistive Device

In this paper, we report on the evaluation strategy and the results that were obtained from the final end-user evaluation process of an innovative robotic assistive device supporting mobility. More specifically, the paper deals with the evaluation of the MOBOT robotic rollator as regards to the system’s overall performance and its individual assistive characteristics and functionalities, as implemented in respect to (i) the provided cognitive assistance, and (ii) the adopted audio-gestural human-robot communication model. User evaluation was designed on the basis of an extensive survey of scales and methodologies widely reported in the relevant literature. The actual evaluation phase exploited the QUEST 2.0, ATDPA-Device Form, and PYTHEIA scales to measure the subjective satisfaction of the users. The PYTHEIA scale, in particular, was structured in order to fill the gaps that were identified during the study of previously existing tools for measuring assistive device user satisfaction. The scale was applied for the first time during the reported evaluation process. An analysis of the results showed that MOBOT was ranked very high by end users in all of the aspects addressed by the three employed assessment scales, thus providing significant evidence for positive acceptance of any industrialized outcome of the current prototype in the assistive robots market

Sign Language Technologies and the Critical Role of SL Resources in View of Future Internet Accessibility Services

In this paper, we touch upon the requirement for accessibility via Sign Language as regards dynamic composition and exchange of new content in the context of natural language-based human interaction, and also the accessibility of web services and electronic content in written text by deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals. In this framework, one key issue remains the option for composition of signed “text„, along with the ability for the reuse of pre-existing signed “text„ by exploiting basic editing facilities similar to those available for written text that serve vocal language representation. An equally critical related issue is accessibility of vocal language text by born or early deaf signers, as well as the use of web-based facilities via Sign Language-supported interfaces, taking into account that the majority of native signers present limited reading skills. It is, thus, demonstrated how Sign Language technologies and resources may be integrated in human-centered applications, enabling web services and content accessibility in the education and an everyday communication context, in order to facilitate integration of signer populations in a societal environment that is strongly defined by smart life style conditions. This potential is also demonstrated by end-user-evaluation results

Organizing a bilingual lexicographic database with the use of WordNet

This paper reports on the restructuring of a bilingual (Greek Sign Language, GSL – Modern Greek) lexicographic database with the use of the WordNet semantic and lexical database. The relevant research was carried out by the Institute for Language and Speech Processing (ILSP) / Athena R.C. team within the framework of the European project Easier. The project will produce a framework for intelligent machine translation to bring down language barriers among several spoken/written and sign languages. This paper describes the experience of the ILSP team to contribute to a multilingual repository of signs and their corresponding translations and to organize and enhance a bilingual dictionary (GSL – Modern Greek) as a result of this mapping; this will be the main focus of this paper. The methodology followed relies on the use of WordNet and, more specifically, the Open Multilingual WordNet (OMW) tool to map content in GSL to WordNet synsets

What about synthetic signing? A methodology for signer involvement in the development of avatar technology with generative capacity

<p>Although signing avatar technology seems to be the only option currently available to serve sign language (SL) display in the context of applications which demand generative capacity from the part of the technology like in machine translation to SL, signing avatars have not yet been accepted by signers' communities. One major factor for this rejection is the feeling that technology is developed without the involvement of its actual users. Aiming to invite the signers' community into the process of signing avatar development, we have designed the shell methodological framework for signer-informed technology which is implemented as on-line surveys addressed to signer communities of different SLs. The surveys are communicated via focused on-line questionnaires with content of signing avatar performance that allows rating of various aspects of the produced SL synthetic signing by human signers. Here we report on the first survey application with content from the Greek Sign Language (GSL). The analysis of the obtained results is 2-fold: it highlights the significance of signer involvement and the provided feedback in the technological development of synthetic signing; in parallel it reveals those aspects of the survey setup that need fine-tuning before its next distribution cycles. The implementation of the first on-line survey can be found in: https://sign.ilsp.gr/slt-survey/.</p&gt

Placing multi-modal, and multi-lingual data in the humanities domain on the map: The Mythotopia geotagged corpus

<p>The paper gives an account of an infrastructure that will be integrated into a platform aimed at providing a multi-faceted experience to visitors of Northern Greece using mythology as a starting point. This infrastructure comprises a multi-lingual and multi-modal corpus (i.e., a corpus of textual data supplemented with images and video) that belongs to the humanities domain along with a dedicated database (content management system) with advanced indexing, linking, and search functionalities. We will present the corpus itself focusing on the content, the methodology adopted for its development, and the steps taken towards rendering it accessible via the database in a way that also facilitates useful visualizations. In this context, we tried to address three main challenges: (a) to add a novel annotation layer, namely geotagging, (b) to ensure the long-term maintenance of and accessibility to the highly heterogeneous primary data – even after the life cycle of the current project – by adopting a metadata schema that is compatible to existing standards; and (c) to render the corpus a useful resource to scholarly research in the digital humanities by adding a minimum set of linguistic annotations.</p&gt

Exposing geospatial cultural heritage content in map-based applications

<p>This paper presents our implementation of interactive services related to map-based exploration of cultural heritage geospatial data. We first present our methodology for interlinking geographical entities (e.g., Points of Interest), i.e., the identification of same real-world geographical representations between different data sources. Then, we present efficient methods towards functionalities related to itinerary planning. The methods are part of the Mythotopia infrastructure which includes multilingual and multimodal digital content in the humanities, and advanced exploration-based functionalities. An interface allows users to interact and explore the rich content of the corpus.</p&gt