Preface

摘要

The annual conference on Text, Speech and Dialogue (TSD), which originated in 1998, constitutes a recognized platform for the presentation and discussion of state-of-the-art technology and recent achievements in natural language processing. It has become a broad interdisciplinary forum, interweaving the topics of speech technology and language processing. The conference attracts researchers not only from Central and Eastern Europe but also from other parts of the world. Indeed, one of its goals has always been to bring together NLP researchers with various interests from different parts of the world and to promote their mutual cooperation. One of the ambitions of the conference is, as its title says, not only to deal with dialogue systems but also to improve dialogue between researchers in the two areas of NLP, i.e., between 'dialogue' and 'speech' people. Moreover, the TSD 2015 conference was partially organized at the new learning and research center of the University of West Bohemia in Plzen (Pilsen), which was opened last year. This center, named NTIS (New Technologies for the Information Society), is a European project under the Operational Program 'Research and Development for Innovations,' aiming at establishing a European Center of Excellence at the Faculty of Applied Sciences of the University of West Bohemia. A new building was constructed for use by NTIS, housing offices and laboratories with total area of 12 thousand sq. meters. However, top-level research must always be coupled with education. Thus, new lecture rooms and laboratories for students' use were built there and the project goal is to improve the quality and to increase the number of graduates choosing to continue their careers in research and development.