Ｈｉｓｔｏｒｙ ｏｆ ＰＡ ＣＬＩＮＧ Ｎａｏｙｕｋｉ ＯＫＡＤＡ The First Ｐｒｅｓｉｄｅｎｔ Aug. 22nd, 2003

Background Trends of Natural language processing in ’ 80s Japan: Some researchers were aware of importance in exchanging information with Oceania, whereas most researchers with USA and Europe. Australia: Some researchers wanted academic exchanges with Japan.

USA: Some researchers were interested in machine translation systems, especially, by Japanese enterprises. Canada: Some researchers of the west coast wanted to promote much more exchanges with Asian countries.

Meeting and separation at Las Cruces, USA Yorick Wilks, Director of CRL Naoyuki Okada, Visiting senior researcher of CRL Xiuming Huang, Researcher of CRL Dan Fass, Researcher of CRL

Meeting and separation at Las Cruces, USA Yorick Wilks, Director of CRL ---> Univ. of Sheffield, UK Naoyuki Okada, Visiting senior researcher of CRL ---> KIT, Japan Xiuming Huang, Researcher of CRL ---> Simon Fraser Univ., Canada Dan Fass, Researcher of CRL ---> Univ. of Melbourne, Australia

Japan-Australia Joint symposia on Natural Language Processing First symposium in 1989 Okada, then chair of Technical Committee NLP of IEICE Japan, proposed to hold a symposium with Univ. of Melbourne, Australia. Univ. of Melbourne accepted it, and twenty researchers, ten from each country, met at Melbourne to have fruitful discussions on NLP.

Second symposium in 1991 Okada held the second one at Kyushu Institute of Technology in Iizuka, Japan, which was open to the researchers in Pacific countries. Canadian researchers joined this, and Nick Cercone of then Simon Fraser Univ. proposed to extend this symposium to Pacific Rim countries.

Ｂｉｒｔｈ of Pacific Association of Computational LINGuistics It ’ s aim and features - PACLING will be a low-profile, high-quality, workshop-oriented meeting whose aim is to promote friendly scientific relations among Pacific Rim countries, The conference represents a unique forum for scientific and technological exchange, being smaller than ACL, COLING, or Applied NLP, and also more regional with extensive representation from the Pacific.

Organization President: Naoyuki Okada(then Kyushu Inst. of Tech., Japan) Members: Christian Mathiessen(then Univ. of Sydney, Australia) Nick Cercone(then Simon Fraser Univ., Canada) Yorick Wilks( then NMSU, USA)

Table 1 The 1 st conference No.Year Speech (Special+ Regular+ Poster) Int ’ l journal Country (Japan,Austlaria, USA,Canada) Singapore, Taiwan, Hongkong, France, Netherlands

Growth of PACLING Table2 The 2 nd and 3 rd conferences 21995Bris- bane Taiwan,Korea, UK,Ireland 31997Ohme Comput. Intell. Hongkong, Korea, New Zealand,France

Extension of PACLING Region Pacific Rim+ East coast of Canada Cooperation With Computational Intelligence Organization Renewal

Table 3 The 4 th through 6 th conferences 41999Waterloo Comput. Intell. Thailand, New Zealand, Mexico, France,UK 52001Kita- Kyushu Comput. Intell. France,UK, UAE, 62003Halifax

New organization President: Nick Cercone (Dalhousie University, Canada) Organizing Committee Members: Hiroshi Sakaki (Meisei University, Japan) Robert Dale (Macquarie University, Australia) Randy Goebel (University of Alberta, Canada) Sergei Nierenberg (New Mexico State University, USA) Advisory Committee Members: Naoyuki Okada (Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan) Yorick Wilks (Sheffield University, England) Christian Matthiessen (Macquarie University, Australia) Charles Fillmore (University of California, Berkeley, USA)

Ｆｕｔｕｒｅ ｏｆ ＰＡＣ ＬＩＮＧ PACLING has not been supported by a society or institute very much, but by several volunteers strongly: Nick Cercone, Christian Matthiessen, Hiroshi Sakaki, Shun-Ishizaki, and Naoyuki Okada. This style matches a low-profile, high-quality, workshop-oriented meeting. PACLING will continue as far as such volunteers do not disappear from the Pacific Rim region, and needless to say, young volunteers are growing.