Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI), the computing research arm of Qatar Foundations’ Research and Development Department, won the ‘Best in Show’ award at the third edition of NewsHACK, which took place last month in Rainmaking Loft, London.
The 3rd edition of NewsHACK was based on developments in language technologies. QCRI presented some of its language technologies and innovations at the event.
Over 50 participants from all over the world took part in the event to hack around language technologies. QCRI was represented by a team in the event. Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle, Bulgarian semantic tech company, Ontotext as well as participants from Latvia and Portugal were some other prominent groups that took part in the event.
Among all the projects, the judges picked up QCRI as the winner of the ‘Best in Show’ award. QCRI used its language techniques to translating BBC Arabic video into English, including subtitles, voice and using speaker diarisation to change gender of speech synthesis alongside the changes in the voiceover gender.
The organisers highlighted that that they were highly impressed by the language technologies of QCRI and have cited it as a major outcome of the two-day event.
