Center for Research on Bangla Language Processing

The Center for Research on Bangla Language Processing (CRBLP) of BRAC University is currently conducting research projects that deal with Bangla language processing. At present the research team is working on Bangla Document authoring, Information Retrieval (Spelling checker, Search Engine), Optical Character Recognition, Pronunciation Generator, Speech Processing, Morphological Analysis, Parts of Speech Tagging, Syntax, Grammar Checker, Text Categorization, Language Modeling and many more interesting research areas.

Please download [CRBLP-summary] for detailed summary of CRBLP's research on Bangla Language Processing. This document has relevant publications section and download links for each projects.

This center is supported in part by a grant from the PAN Localization Project (PanL10n) of the International Development Research Corporation (IDRC) of Ottawa, Canada.

CURRENT NEWS

• A paper accepted in SLTU’08 conference on "ACOUSTIC ANALYSIS OF BANGLA CONSONANTS" by Firoj Alam, S M Murtoza Habib and Mumit Khan.


• In February 2008, "The Daily Star", the most widely read English newspaper in Bangladesh, and a monthly tech-news magazine "The Monthly Computer Jagat" covered activities of CRBLP on Bangla language processing. [The Daily Star pdf] [Computer Jagat scanned copy]


• The Global Information Society Watch (2007) report covered activities of CRBLP saying, "BRAC University now hosts the country's main localisation centre". ( read the original report: pages 114-115). [download]


• CRBLP released CRBLPConverter version 1.1, under the GNU Public License 2 with some new features and bug fixes. Source and binary for CRBLPConverter can be downloaded directly from sourceforge. It is platform independent, so it can run to any OS. Development team of the CRBLPConverter includes, Fahim Tawfique Chowdhury, Md. Zahurul Islam, and Mumit Khan. [download]
  
  
• CRBLP signed an MOU with the Linguistics Department of the University of Dhaka to build a research partnership with the goal of increasing our national capacity in the field of Computational Linguistics. A key component is to develop the underlying linguistic framework that is needed to further the Computational Linguistics work being done at CRBLP; another is to jointly develop Bangla linguistic resources such as lexica, corpora and dictionaries. Dr. Mumit Khan, Head of CRBLP and Dr. Feroza Yasmin, Chairperson of DU Linguistics, signed the MOU on behalf of their respective institutions. [more]


• CRBLP has received a Local Language Programme (LLP) grant from the Microsoft Corporation to localize the next version of Microsoft Windows (Vista) and Microsoft Office (Office 2007) in Bangla. The Microsoft LLP also includes Bangladesh Computer Council, who will create the glossary of computer terminology and the translation style guide, which CRBLP will use to create the Bangla Language Interface Pack (LIP). Windows Vista and Office users will then be able to download the Bangla LIP for free from Microsoft.
  
  
• In 2006, CRBLP members published 17 papers in different international conferences. Most of them are by our students, who have done an incredible job of doing the work during their Summer Internship and in the NLP course project this year. Notably, our research group has the highest number of papers (11 papers) accepted by any single group in the upcoming ICCIT 2006. We are also proud to have the first paper from Bangladesh accepted by ICON (ICON 2007), the premier NLP conference in India. Out of the 13 interns, 8 have been able to co-author at least one paper.
• For other news, please check news and events section.

IN THE NEWS

• On February 2007, two monthly tech news magazine, The Monthly Computer Jagat and The C-News, covered activities of CRBLP on Bangla language processing. [C-News scanned copy] [Computer Jagat scanned copy]
• On December 1, 2006, Prothom-Alo, the most widely read Bangla newspaper, published a news item on the localization efforts of Windows Vista by CRBLP. It appeared as the main article in the "projonmo.com" section, a weekly IT section in the newspaper. [web] [scanned copy]
• Protidin Computer, an IT related weekly program of Bangladesh Television (BTV), aired a program focused on the activities of CRBLP. The program included an interview of Dr. Mumit Khan, Head, CRBLP; a demonstration of a few demo softwares developed in CRBLP, e.g. Bangla spelling checker (Naushad UzZaman), Bangla search engine (Hammad Ali), Bangla pronunciation generator (Ayesha Binte Mosaddeque), Bangla morphological analyzer (Md. Zahurul Islam) & Bangla OCR (Md. Abul Hasnat and S. M. Murtoza Habib) and covered the interviews of Md. Abul Hasnat, S. M. Murtoza Habib & Firoj Alam on their experience of the PAN Localization Summer School (held in Pakistan), August 2006.

Check CRBLP picture gallery.

Last Update: March 19, 2008