Travel Bursary Report October 2023 - Shihua Li
Shihua Li is a 2nd Year PhD candidate in the School of Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences, in the Centre for Language and Communication Studies
His research is centered on the Tujia language, an endangered Tibeto-Burman language from Central South China. The primary sources of information on this language, primarily from the 1980s to 2000s, often suffer from poor print quality. This challenge motivated Shihua to use Transkribus to develop Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) models for both Chinese characters and IPA symbols.
This year marked his first attendance at an academic conference since starting his PhD.
"Thanks to the TRISS Travel Bursary, I was able to participate in the Transkribus User Conference 2024 this February. I was struck by the number of researchers focusing on HTR for Chinese characters. As expected, I was the sole participant among hundreds of attendees who was developing an HTR model for IPA symbols. The conference proved to be an invaluable opportunity to understand how others use the same platform for various purposes and to share experiences in addressing similar or different challenges. Additionally, I had the opportunity to learn about diverse methods and perspectives from those developing HTR models for other languages, which was immensely beneficial." Shihua said.