Linguistic Data Consortium For Indian Languages (LDC-IL), Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), Mysore in collaboration with Department of Linguistics, Banaras Hindu University organized a ten days Orientation cum Training Programme  On Natural Language Processing from the date 07th to 16th January at Banaras Hindu University Varanasi. This Orientation was organized for Hindi and Maithili Language. The programme started with the Inaugural Function on 07th January 2012 at 10:30 am in the Annie Besant Hall at the Faculty of Arts, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. Prof. Ravi Bhushan Mishra, Head, Department of Computer Engineering, IT-BHU was the Chief Guest and the function was presided over by Prof. Kamal Sheel, Dean, Faculty of Arts and Head, Department of Linguistics. Dr. Anil Thakur, Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics introduced the theme of the Event to the guests and the participants by briefly outlining the major issues in NLP. He also outlined the NLP courses and activities at the Department of Linguistics, Banaras Hindu University and the significance of these courses in the emerging areas of Applied Linguistics. Lightening up the lamp ceremony is done by dignitaries Prof. Ravi Bhushan Mishra, Prof. Kamalsheel, Prof. R.B. Mishra, Prof. R. N. Bhatt, and Prof. G. Trivikramaya. Dr. Sanjukta Ghosh, Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics, presented a vote of thanks.

There were only thirty registered participants but several other students, scholars and teachers (approx. 20-25) from BHU as well as from SSU, Varanasi attended and benefited from the lectures/demonstration of the programme. Most of the lectures were held in the Annie Besant Hall and system demonstrations, hands-on practices were held in the language laboratory at the Faculty of Arts, Banaras Hindu University.

The Inaugural Function was followed by a series of expert lectures by Dr. Anil Kumar Singh, Assistant Professor, KIIT, Bhubaneswar. Dr. Anil Singh gave a series of talks during 7-10 January, 2012 on various aspects of Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing. The topic of his talk included Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Natural Language Processing, Approaches to NLP: Computational Grammar & Data Driven, Database Systems among some others. His talks covered a wide range of important topics that generated a lot of interactions and queries.

On the second day Dr. Anil Kumar Singh gave lecture on Machine Learning (Statistical Approaches): HMM, Neural Networks & Genetic Algorithms, Deep Syntactic Parsing, and Ms. Arundhati gave a lecture on Speech Data Collection and introduced the participants to this new area where a lot of works are being done by LDC-IL team at CIIL and elsewhere that require trained manpower in their field of NLP.

Third day was started off with Prof.  Ravi Bhushan Mishra lecture on Artificial Intelligence (AI). Dr. Anil Kumar Singh gave lecture on Tree Banking (Issues in Design & Development).

The fourth day was devoted to an extensive lecture on Generative Lexicon by Dr. Sanjukta Ghosh, Department of Linguistics, BHU, After Dr. Anil Kumar Singh gave lecture on Machine Translation.

The fifth day Prof.  Ravi Bhushan Mishra and Shahanwaz delivered lecture on Machine Translation and Dr. Sanjukta Ghosh gave lecture on Computational Semantics.

On the sixth day Ms Aditi delivered lecture on POS tagging introduced the participants to the issues in designing tagsets with practice and Prof. RB Misra (Retd.), Department of Linguistics, BHU delivered lecture on Issues in Translation. Afternoon Ms Aditi delivered lecture on Segmentation and annotation of speech corpus of Indian Language with practice.

The seventh day Dr. Jitendra Kumar Singh delivered lecture on morphological analyzer with a lot of hands-on practice on the tools and Dr. Arun Kumar Singh gave an introduction to the Maithili morphological analyzer with a practice session.

On 8th day the holiday on 14th (Makarshankranti/Pongal) was well utilised to organise a trip to Sarnath that was thoroughly enjoyed by all the participants.

On ninth day Mr. Atuleshwar Jha & Mr. Dinesh Mishra talked about Corpus collection Methodology, Mr. N. Rajesha delivered lecture on Corpus Utilities, and Dr. Satyendra Awasthi gave a talk and demonstration on transliteration in Indian languages.

The tenth day Mr. N. Rajesha delivered lecture on Encoding and OCR. The Valedictory Function was held on the 16th January, 2012 in the Radha Krishnan Hall, Faculty of Arts, Banaras Hindu University at 12 noon with Prof. RC Panda, Dean, Sanskrit Dharmgyanvigyan Sankaya, BHU as the Chief Guest and Prof. Kamal Sheel, Dean, Faculty of Arts, BHU in the Chair. The Function started with Saraswati Vandana by Ms. Moumita Das and Ms. Neha Maurya and others followed by Buddhist Invocation by Thai monks. Dr. Anil Thakur presented a brief report of the lectures, demonstration, and practices of the different events during the course of the event. Dr. Jitendra Singh briefly outlined the ongoing projects of the LDC-IL. Prof. R.N. Bhat shared his experience with NLP courses at the Department of Linguistics at BHU. Prof. Panda delivered Keynote talk outlining the need to explore more interdisciplinary interactions across different faculties and departments at BHU to start NLP programmes. He was overwhelmed by the participants’ response on the programmes of the Event. Prof. Kamal Sheel delivered the presidential remarks and expressed his whole-hearted support and encouragements for such programmes at the Department of Linguistics, BHU and also thanked the LDC-IL team from CIIL, Mysore for organising this programme at BHU. Dr. Sanjukta Ghosh gave the Vote of Thanks. She, in particular, thanked Mr. Manish Singh, Ms. Neha Maurya, Ms. Vandana and Ashok Kumar (all students of Linguistics at BHU) who worked very hard throughout the programme in looking after food arrangements and making participants’ and experts’ stay at BHU comfortable. The Valedictory Function concluded with Certificate distribution to the participants and a Cultural Event by the participants and the organisers of the Event. Dance performance by Dr. Sanjukta Ghosh, Ms. Parul Upadhyay, songs by Mr. Atul Aman, Ms. Moumita Das, Dr. Jitendra Singh, Dr. Satyendra Awasthi, Mr. Atuleshwar Jha, Ms. Radharani Mohanty, Mr. Dharam Raj, Prof. R. B Misra; and poerty by Mr. Anubhav Tripathi, Mr. Shishir, enthralled the audience who parted with a pleasant memory.