Tilde SIA invites applications for a research assistant position in Machine Translation at the Department of Research and Architecture for a period of 19 months starting May 1, 2012.

The position  involves participation in the EU project CLARA – Common Language Resources and their Applications, which is a Marie Curie Initial Training Network receiving funding from the European Commission’s 7^th Framework Programme.

The specific position involves participation in the CLARA subproject Translation tools and resources for under-resourced languages which is a cooperation between TILDE, University of Zagreb and the Charles University in Prague. The overall aim of the subproject is to investigate possibilities to facilitate development of translation tools (mainly SMT systems) and resources for languages that currently have limited translation technologies and resources. Two research directions are suggested. The first research direction will be an investigation of the existing MT methods to find the most suitable solution (rule-based, data-driven, hybrid) for highly inflected languages with limited or no parallel corpora available. The second direction will be research of innovative content creation methods (mainly parallel and comparable corpora, and lexicons) to find effective methods to create content necessary for data-driven MT technologies.

The CLARA network offers an intensive research exchange programme between 16 participating institutions. While staying with the host institution for most of the time, the programme allows for a shorter stay at a second academic or industrial partner institution (secondment). As part of the PhD level activities, the successful candidate will be expected to take part actively in training activities organised by CLARA. This includes summer schools, seminars and courses organised locally and at other network institutions.

Applicants should hold a strong university degree (masters diploma or equivalent) which would entitle them to embark on a PhD project in a relevant discipline, and should be in the first four years of their research careers. Students who are completing their master’s degree during the current semester are also invited to apply. As the project is intended to involve work on Machine Translation, applicant needs to have very strong background in computational linguistics or computer science. In addition, as all CLARA training events will be in English, applicants need to have a good working knowledge of English. Women are particularly encouraged to apply.

The successful candidate will be offered enrollment in a PhD program at an associated university.

As the project is funded by an EU mobility scheme, there are also certain mobility requirements. Most importantly, the candidate must not be a national of Latvia, the country of the host institution. Applicants must not have resided or performed their main activity in the host country more than 12 months in the 3 year period immediately prior to the start date.

For a full list of mobility criteria, see https://clara.uib.no/files/2010/02/Work_programme_CLARA.pdf.

The salary of a junior researcher position is roughly EUR 24,529.5 per year. There is an additional mobility allowance (up to 800 euro/month), travel allowance (yearly), and a single career exploratory allowance. The income is taxable. There is a budget to cover participation costs, such as attendance at CLARA events abroad.

TILDE (www.tilde.com) is the Baltic IT company, the recognized leader in research and development of human language technologies for the languages of the Baltic countries. A combination of statistical and knowledge driven approaches is used to provide state-of-the-art language technologies. TILDE’s experience has resulted in widely used software products for the Baltic languages, including automated translation tools, machine translation solutions, multilingual electronic dictionaries, spoken language technologies, proofing tools and terminology data bases.

For further information about the available position and project, please contact Dr. Inguna Skadiņa, inguna.skadina@tilde.lv. Enquiries regarding admission requirements, application procedures etc. may also be directed to the darbs@tilde.lv.

To be fully considered, please provide the following:

• A curriculum vitae including the following information:
  • Name, place and date of birth, gender and address.
  • Nationality (or nationalities) and record of residence (countries and periods of residence in those) for the past 3 years.
  • List of academic degrees obtained. For each degree, give the title in the original language in English, the awarding institution and date. Clearly indicate which degree (or degrees) formally entitles you to embark on a doctorate, and which degree (or degrees) constitutes a doctorate, if applicable.
  • An overview of research jobs (indicating also breaks e.g. parental leave) during the past 4 years.
• A list of topics covered in your studies (e.g. a list of courses), other relevant knowledge and activities in relevant research areas.
• Positions held and other relevant work experience.
• A list of publications.
• A sample of relevant written work (e.g. research paper or thesis, preferably in English).
• Copies of university certificates and diplomas, and transcripts of courses taken.
• Two references and their contact information.
• A statement of research interests related to the current application.

The application should preferably be sent as a pdf file or a zip archive of pdf files.  In case an application can only be submitted by regular post, it should be sent to:

SIA “Tilde”
Vienības gatve 75a
LV-1004, Riga
Latvia

Application deadline: March 4, 2011