Sociedad Española para el Procesamiento del Lenguaje Natural (SEPLN, in English: ''Spanish association for Natural Language Processing'') is a scientific and professional organization for researching

natural language processing Natural language processing (NLP) is a subfield of computer science and especially artificial intelligence. It is primarily concerned with providing computers with the ability to process data encoded in natural language and is thus closely related ...

. Its namesake conference has been held each summer since 1983 in Spanish locations where

computational linguistics Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field concerned with the computational modelling of natural language, as well as the study of appropriate computational approaches to linguistic questions. In general, computational linguistics ...

research is carried out. It was founded in 1983, and its purpose is to promote and divulge every kind of activity related to teaching, research and development in the natural language processing field, on both a national and international level. The first SEPLN president was

Felisa Verdejo María Felisa Verdejo Maillo (born 1950, Salamanca), known as Felisa Verdejo, is a university professor in the Department of Computer Languages and Systems at National University of Distance Education, UNED. She is one of the Spanish pioneers in n ...

, when she was a professor at the

University of the Basque Country The University of the Basque Country (, ''EHU''; , ''UPV''; officially EHU) is a Spanish public university of the Basque Country (autonomous community), Basque Autonomous Community. Heir of the University of Deusto, University of Bilbao, initial ...

San Sebastián San Sebastián, officially known by the bilingual name Donostia / San Sebastián (, ), is a city and municipality located in the Basque Autonomous Community, Spain. It lies on the coast of the Bay of Biscay, from the France–Spain border ...

Activities

Among the main activities of the SEPLN are the organization of an annual congress, which is attended by the research groups working in the

field, especially for

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

, Catalan,

Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...

or Galician languages; the edition of the academic journal ''Procesamiento del Lenguaje Natural'' supported by a committee who guarantee some established criteria of quality and periodicity; a web server with information about issues related to natural language processing and an email service which inform about the current issues and is used as an open forum. Portada PLN2012

The journal is published every six months, so two issues per year are published (March and September) with the last advances in NLP. The Journal has the quality seal of the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT), which certifies it as a magazine of excellence, and therefore included in the Spanish Scientific Journals Repository (RECyT, Spanish Repository of Science and technology). The Journal received the seal of quality (ISO9001) in 2012, from the Spanish Federation of Science and Technology (FECYT). The Journal was indexed in the

Emerging Sources Citation Index The Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) is a citation index produced since 2015 by Thomson Reuters and now by Clarivate. According to the publisher, the index includes "peer-reviewed publications of regional importance and in emerging scientific ...

(ESCI) in 2016. The ESCI is the new edition of

Web of Science The Web of Science (WoS; previously known as Web of Knowledge) is a paid-access platform that provides (typically via the internet) access to multiple databases that provide reference and citation data from academic journals, conference proceedi ...

, and Thonson Reuters is assessing the quality of the journals of ESCI in order to add those ones with a 'high scientific quality' in the Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index.

NLP community

The SEPLN society has built an academic community around

, coordinating more than thirty research groups working especially with any of these four languages: Spanish, Basque, Catalan and Galician. This community is a reference in Latin America and worldwide, especially because it has created models for the successful processing of Spanish and three minority languages. State of language technology support ELE2022

State of language technology support ELE2022

The coordinated development of technology for Spanish, Basque, Catalan and Galician by this community has benefited the four languages as a whole. The Asturian and Aragonese languages have also been studied. This positive influence of SEPLN's activity can be seen in the ELE report that analysed the situation of European languages in language technology by 2022. Spanish was one of the four best resourced among the official languages, behind English, on a par with

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

and

French French may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France ** French people, a nation and ethnic group ** French cuisine, cooking traditions and practices Arts and media * The French (band), ...

; Catalan, Basque and Galician were the best placed among the non-official languages, along with

Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, of or about Wales * Welsh language, spoken in Wales * Welsh people, an ethnic group native to Wales Places * Welsh, Arkansas, U.S. * Welsh, Louisiana, U.S. * Welsh, Ohio, U.S. * Welsh Basin, during t ...

, and were in a better position than some of the official or national languages (better than

Irish Gaelic Irish (Standard Irish: ), also known as Irish Gaelic or simply Gaelic ( ), is a Celtic language of the Indo-European language family. It is a member of the Goidelic languages of the Insular Celtic sub branch of the family and is indigeno ...

and

Maltese Maltese may refer to: * Someone or something of, from, or related to Malta * Maltese alphabet * Maltese cuisine * Maltese culture * Maltese language, the Semitic language spoken by Maltese people * Maltese people, people from Malta or of Maltese ...

Locations

This is the timeline of cities with a NLP group that organized SEPLN conferences:

Presidents

The presidents who have governed this society since its creation have been the following:

References

External links