United States

A simile is a powerful figure of speech that makes a comparison between two different things via shared properties, often using words like &quot;like&quot; or &quot;as&quot; to create vivid imagery, convey emotions, and enhance understanding. However, computational research on similes is limited in low-resource languages like Tamil due to the lack of simile datasets. This work introduces a manually annotated Tamil Simile Dataset (TSD) comprising around 1.5k simile sentences drawn from various sources. Our data annotation guidelines ensure that all the simile sentences are annotated with the three components, namely tenor, vehicle, and context. We benchmark our dataset for simile interpretation and simile generation tasks using chosen pre-trained language models (PLMs) and present the results. Our findings highlight the challenges of simile tasks in Tamil, suggesting areas for further improvement. We believe that TSD will drive progress in computational simile processing for Tamil and other low-resource languages, further advancing simile related tasks in Natural Language Processing.

NAACL 2025

TSD: Towards Computational Processing of Tamil Similes - A Tamil Simile Dataset

simile dataset

simile generation

simile interpretation

low-resource languages

pre-trained language models

natural language processing

# Welcome everyone to ACL 2022!

The 60th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics is taking place May 22-27, 2022 as a hybrid event, in Dublin and online. We are happy to welcome all of you to this anniversary edition with an almost 50-50 in-person and virtual participation. 
The main conference program features oral presentations, in-person and virtual posters and demo sessions, a plenary session for our best paper presentations and awards, three amazing keynote events and two new initiatives of invited talks: Spotlight Talks for Young Rising Stars (STIRS) and The Next Big Idea Talks. Posters (including Findings of ACL 2022) and demos are grouped by areas for both the in-person and the virtual sessions. For the virtual component, the talks will be on Zoom and the posters and the demos will be in GatherTown. The Student Research Workshop will have an oral session and a poster session as part of Poster Session 1. The program also features eight Tutorials and 28 Workshops. 

 
We wish you a wonderful conference! 
[**The ACL 2022 Organizing Committee**](https://www.2022.aclweb.org/organisers)
 
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ACL 2022

The Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) is the premier international scientific and professional society for people working on computational problems involving human language, a field often referred to as either computational linguistics or natural language processing (NLP). 

A simile is a powerful figure of speech that makes a comparison between two different things via shared properties, often using words like "like" or "as" to create vivid imagery, convey emotions, and enhance understanding. However, computational research on similes is limited in low-resource languages like Tamil due to the lack of simile datasets. This work introduces a manually annotated Tamil Simile Dataset (TSD) comprising around 1.5k simile sentences drawn from various sources. Our data annotation guidelines ensure that all the simile sentences are annotated with the three components, namely tenor, vehicle, and context. We benchmark our dataset for simile interpretation and simile generation tasks using chosen pre-trained language models (PLMs) and present the results. Our findings highlight the challenges of simile tasks in Tamil, suggesting areas for further improvement. We believe that TSD will drive progress in computational simile processing for Tamil and other low-resource languages, further advancing simile related tasks in Natural Language Processing.

workshop paper

### Welcome to 2025 Annual Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics

Welcome to the 2025 meeting of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics! I am proud to help organize the first NAACL conference to carry the new name of our organization, one that emphasizes inclusion for all of the Americas. I am also pleased to welcome you to Albuquerque, New Mexico, a state whose unique blend of cultural influences will make for an excellent backdrop for NAACL 2025, especially with this year’s special theme on NLP in a Multicultural World. 
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Welcome to 2025 Annual Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics

Emotion analysis plays a significant role in understanding human behavior and communication, yet research in Tamil language remains limited. This study focuses on building an emotion classifier for Tamil texts using machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL), along with creating an emotion-annotated Tamil corpus for Ekman's basic emotions. Our dataset combines publicly available data with re-annotation and translations. Along with traditional ML models we investigated the use of Transfer Learning (TL) with state-of-the-art models, such as BERT and Electra based models. Experiments were conducted on unbalanced and balanced datasets using data augmentation techniques. The results indicate that Multinomial Naive Bayes (MNB) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) performed well with TF-IDF and BoW representations, while among Transfer Learning models, LaBSE achieved the highest accuracy (63% balanced, 69% unbalanced), followed by TamilBERT and IndicBERT.

Towards Effective Emotion Analysis in Low-Resource Tamil Texts

Sentiment analysis in code-mixed languages poses significant challenges due to the complex nature of mixed-language text. This study explores sentiment analysis on Tamil code-mixed text using deep learning models such as Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), hybrid models like Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) + Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) and LSTM + GRU, along with meta-models including Logistic Regression, Random Forest, and Decision Tree. The LSTM+GRU hybrid model achieved an accuracy of 0.31, while the CNN+GRU hybrid model reached 0.28. The Random Forest meta-model demonstrated exceptional performance on the development set with an accuracy of 0.99. However, its performance dropped significantly on the test set, achieving an accuracy of 0.1333. The study results emphasize the potential of meta-model-based classification for improving performance in NLP tasks.

Bridging Linguistic Complexity: Sentiment Analysis of Tamil Code-Mixed Text Using Meta-Model

The prevalence of misogynistic content online poses significant challenges to ensuring a safe and inclusive digital space for women. This study presents a pipeline to classify online memes as misogynistic or non misogynistic. The pipeline combines contextual image embeddings generated using the Vision Transformer Encoder (ViTE) model with text embeddings extracted from the memes using ModernBERT. These multimodal embeddings were fused and trained using three advanced types of Kolmogorov Artificial Networks (KAN): PyKAN, FastKAN, and Chebyshev KAN. The models were evaluated based on their F1 scores, demonstrating their effectiveness in addressing this issue. This research marks an important step towards reducing offensive online content, promoting safer and more respectful interactions in the digital world.

Misogynistic Meme Detection in Dravidian Languages Using Kolmogorov Arnold-based Networks

We propose a novel dataset for detecting religious hate speech in the context of elections in Karnataka, with a particular focus on Kannada and Kannada-English code-mixed text. The data was collected during the Karnataka state elections and includes 3,000 labeled samples that reflect various forms of online discourse related to religion. This dataset aims to address the growing concern of religious intolerance and hate speech during election periods, it's a dataset of multilingual, code-mixed language. To evaluate the effectiveness of this dataset, we benchmarked it using the latest state-of-the-art algorithms. We achieved accuracy of 78.61%.

Detection of Religious Hate Speech During Elections in Karnataka

Detecting hate speech on social media is increasingly difficult, particularly in low-resource Dravidian languages such as Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam. Traditional approaches primarily rely on text-based classification, often overlooking the multimodal nature of online communication, where speech plays a pivotal role in spreading hate speech. We propose a multimodal hate speech detection model using a late fusion technique that integrates Wav2Vec 2.0 for speech processing and Muril for text analysis. Our model is evaluated on the DravidianLangTech@NAACL 2025 dataset, which contains speech and text data in Telugu, Tamil, and Malayalam scripts. The dataset is categorized into six classes: Non-Hate, Gender Hate, Political Hate, Religious Hate, Religious Defamation, and Personal Defamation. To address class imbalance, we incorporate class weighting and data augmentation techniques. Experimental results demonstrate that the late fusion approach effectively captures patterns of hate speech that may be missed when analyzing a single modality. This highlights the importance of multimodal strategies in enhancing hate speech detection, particularly for low-resource languages.

DravLingua@DravidianLangTech 2025: Multimodal Hate Speech Detection in Dravidian Languages using Late Fusion of Muril and Wav2Vec Models

The detection of hate speech in social media platforms is very crucial these days. This is due to its adverse impact on mental health, social harmony, and online safety. This paper presents the overview of the shared task on Multimodal Hate Speech Detection in Dravidian Languages organized as part of DravidianLangTech@NAACL 2025. The task emphasizes detecting hate speech in social media content that combines speech and text. Here, we focus on three low-resource Dravidian languages: Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu. Participants were required to classify hate speech in three sub-tasks, each corresponding to one of these languages. The dataset was curated by collecting speech and corresponding text from YouTube videos. Various machine learning and deep learning-based models, including transformer-based architectures and multimodal frameworks, were employed by the participants. The submissions were evaluated using the macro F1 score. Experimental results underline the potential of multimodal approaches in advancing hate speech detection for low-resource languages. Team SSNTrio achieved the highest F1 score in Malayalam and Tamil of 0.7511 and 0.7332, respectively. Team lowes scored the best F1 score of 0.3817 in the Telugu sub-task.

Overview of the Shared Task on Multimodal Hate Speech Detection in Dravidian languages: DravidianLangTech@NAACL 2025

The detection of AI-generated product reviews is critical due to the increased use of large language models (LLMs) and their capability to generate convincing sentences. The AIgenerated reviews can affect the consumers and businesses as they influence the trust and decision-making. This paper presents the overview of the shared task on Detecting AI-generated product reviews in Dravidian Languages" organized as part of DravidianLangTech@NAACL 2025. This task involves two subtasks—one in Malayalam and another in Tamil, both of which are binary classifications where a review is to be classified as human-generated or AI-generated. The dataset was curated by collecting comments from YouTube videos. Various machine learning and deep learning-based models ranging from SVM to transformer-based architectures were employed by the participants.

Overview of the Shared Task on Detecting AI generated Product Reviews in Dravidian Languages: DravidianLangTech@NAACL 2025

The rapid expansion of social media has facilitated communication but also enabled the spread of misogynistic memes, reinforcing gender stereotypes and toxic online environments. Detecting such content is challenging due to the multimodal nature of memes, where meaning emerges from the interplay of text and images. The Misogyny Meme Detection shared task at DravidianLangTech@NAACL 2025 focused on Tamil and Malayalam, encouraging the development of multimodal approaches. With 114 teams registered and 23 submitting predictions, participants leveraged various pretrained language models and vision models through fusion techniques. The best models achieved high macro F1 scores (0.83682 for Tamil, 0.87631 for Malayalam), highlighting the effectiveness of multimodal learning. Despite these advances, challenges such as bias in the data set, class imbalance, and cultural variations persist. Future research should refine multimodal detection methods to improve accuracy and adaptability, fostering safer and more inclusive online spaces

Findings of the Shared Task on Misogyny Meme Detection DravidianLangTech@NAACL 2025

Sentiment analysis is an essential task for interpreting subjective opinions and emotions in textual data, with significant implications across commercial and societal applications. This paper provides an overview of the shared task on Sentiment Analysis in Tamil and Tulu, organized as part of DravidianLangTech@NAACL 2025. The task comprises two components: one addressing Tamil and the other focusing on Tulu, both designed as multi-class classification challenges, wherein the sentiment of a given text must be categorized as positive, negative, neutral and unknown. The dataset was diligently organized by aggregating user-generated content from social media platforms such as YouTube and Twitter, ensuring linguistic diversity and real-world applicability. Participants applied a variety of computational approaches, ranging from classical machine learning algorithms such as Traditional Machine Learning Models, Deep Learning Models, Pre-trained Language Models and other Feature Representation Techniques to tackle the challenges posed by linguistic code-mixing, orthographic variations, and resource scarcity in these low resource languages.

Overview of the Shared Task on Sentiment Analysis in Tamil and Tulu

Political multiclass detection is the task of identifying the predefined seven political classes. In this paper, we report an overview of the findings on the "Political Multiclass Sentiment Analysis of Tamil X(Twitter) Comments" shared task conducted at the workshop on DravidianLangTech@NAACL 2025. The participants were provided with annotated Twitter comments, which are split into training, development, and unlabelled test datasets. A total of 139 participants registered for this shared task, and 25 teams finally submitted their results. The performance of the submitted systems was evaluated and ranked in terms of the macro-F1 score.

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