Michal Měchura /ˈmɪxal ˈmɲexura/ EN GA CS
Hello!
I am a language technologist.
I work for University of Vienna’s Centre for Translation Studies
where I develop next-generation tools for machine translation post-editing and un-biasing,
and for Gaois in Dublin City University where I build and maintain Irish language resources.
PhD Computer Science, Masaryk University, 2024,
thesis: Data Structures in Lexicography
| PgDip Applied Irish, Dublin Institute of Technology, 2010
| MPhil Speech and Language Processing, University of Dublin/Trinity College Dublin, 2008,
dissertation: Selectional Preferences, Corpora and Ontologies
| BA (Hons), The Open University, 2005
What I’ve been working on
Mo chuid oibre
Na čem pracuju
Fairslator
Machine translation bias removal tool
fairslator.com
National Corpus of Irish
corpas.ie
National Terminology Database for Irish
téarma.ie
Placenames Database of Ireland
logainm.ie
Repository of Irish Dialects
canuint.ie
Dictionary and Language Library
teanglann.ie
Terminologue
Open-source terminology management system
terminologue.org
Lexonomy
Open-source dictionary writing system
lexonomy.eu
Foclóir Mháirtín Uí Chadhain
focloiruichadhain.ria.ie
Native Dialogs
Practise languages with virtual humans
nativedialogs.com
Pota Focal
Independent Irish dictionary
potafocal.com
My publications and talks
Mo chuid foilseachán agus cainteanna
Moje publikace a přednášky
2026
TALK
Between a map and a gazetteer: the user experience of toponymic websites BIB
EVENT Placenames Workshop, Dublin, Ireland
TALK
Help, my translation is biased: understanding gender bias in machine translation BIB
EVENT TTT Translation Technology Talks, Vienna, Austria
CONFERENCE PAPER
The past and future of Fairslator BIB
EVENT 4th International Workshop on Gender-Inclusive Translation Technologies, Tilburg, The Netherlands
BOOK CHAPTER
DMLex: Data Model for Lexicography BIB
PUBLISHED IN International Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics
PUBLISHER Elsevier
ISBN 978-0-443-22286-3
CAINT
An tras-scríobh sluafhoinsithe: sa tóir ar an oideas ceart BIB
ÓCÁID Comhdháil ar na Daonnachtaí Digiteacha sa Ghaeilge, Baile Átha Cliath
BLOG
Six golden rules of crowdsourcing in digital humanities
These are the lessons I’ve learned from building crowdsourcing websites.
The UX of toponymy
We need to talk about the user experience of the websites we build as front-ends for our placenames databases.
What’s a product manager and what do they do?
What do you have to know to be one, what should be on your radar?
2025
KEYNOTE SPEECH
We need to talk about data structures in lexicography BIB
EVENT eLex 2025, Bled, Slovenia
BLOG
A short history of digitisation in lexicography
Dictionaries have recently migrated from paper to screens. Let’s take stock of where that leaves us.
Falsehoods programmers believe about languages
This is what we have to put up with in the software localization industry.
What is and isn’t lexicography
Lexicographers love debating what their discipline actually is. Here’s my take.
2024
TUTORIAL
Bias in machine translation: challenges, techniques, perspectives BIB
EVENT AMTA (Association for Machine Translation in the Americas) Conference 2024: Tutorials Day
TALK
A critical look at the data structure behind Logainm.ie BIB
EVENT Thirtieth Spring Conference of Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland, Dublin
BLOG
What lexicographers need to know about DMLex
An unofficial introduction to the Data Model for Lexicography
2023
CONFERENCE PAPER
Correcting biased translations with the Fairslator API BIB
EVENT Translating and the Computer 45
PUBLISHER Tradulex
TALK
Gender bias in machine translation and what terminologists can do about it BIB
EVENT EAFT Summit, Barcelona
TALK
Relations, relations everywhere: an introduction to the DMLex data model BIB
EVENT eLex 2023, Brno, Czech Republic
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Avoiding Recursion in the Representation of Subsenses and Subentries in Dictionaries BIB
PUBLISHED IN International Journal Of Lexicography
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Better than XML: Towards a lexicographic markup language BIB
PUBLISHED IN Data & Knowledge Engineering
INTERVIEW
Creating an Inclusive AI Future: The Importance of Non-Binary Representation BIB
WHERE machinetranslation.com
BLOG
How I reinvented the wheel and discovered projectional editing
Trust me, you want a code editor that doesn’t let you change the code.
2022
CONFERENCE PAPER
Introducing Fairslator: a machine translation bias removal tool BIB
EVENT Translating and the Computer 44
PUBLISHED IN Translating and the Computer 44 Proceedings
PUBLISHER Editions Tradulex
ISBN 978-2-9701733-0-4
PŘEDNÁŠKA
Za námi mnoho, před námi ještě víc: digitalizace lexikografie včera, dnes a zítra BIB
UDÁLOST Seminář Ústavu Českého národního korpusu, Praha
INTERVIEW
When the machine asks the human: in conversation with Michal Měchura BIB
WHERE Goethe-Institut: Artificially Correct
CONFERENCE PAPER
Document or database? The search for the perfect storage paradigm for lexical data. BIB
EVENT Euralex 2022 Conference
CONFERENCE PAPER
A taxonomy of bias-causing ambiguities in machine translation BIB
PUBLISHED IN Proceedings of the 4th workshop on gender bias in natural language processing (GeBNLP)
PUBLISHER Association for Computational Linguistics
CONFERENCE PAPER
Dare to be different: how user needs determine termbase design BIB
EVENT Multilingual Digital Terminology Today: Design, representation formats and management systems
TALK
DMLex, a data model for lexicography: an example-by-example introduction BIB
EVENT ELEXIS Showcase Event, Florence, Italy
TALK
So you want to build a placenames database: an introduction to toponymic data modelling BIB
EVENT Placenames in Bilingual Areas Workshop, Dublin, Ireland
2021
TALK
Terminologue and open source terminology solutions BIB
EVENT European Association for Terminology Summit 2021, Online
TALK
Introducing Terminologue: a cloud-based, open-source terminology management tool BIB
EVENT XIX EURALEX International Congress, Online
TALK
Help, my XML is too complex! The problem of excessive structural markup in dictionaries BIB
EVENT XIX EURALEX International Congress, Online
TALK
Re‑inventing the phrasebook with rule‑based language technology BIB
EVENT Grammatical Framework Summer School, Singapore and online
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Developing the Gaois Linguistic Database of Irish-language Surnames BIB
PUBLISHED IN Names: A Journal of Onomastics
BLOG
A survey of dictionary APIs
A survey of application programming interfaces (APIs) on the Internet which provide access to lexicographic content in machine-readable formats.
2019
2018
TALK
Breaking the tyranny of machine translation BIB
EVENT Grammatical Framework Summer School, Stellenbosch, South Africa
CONFERENCE PAPER
Editing with Search and Exploration for Controlled Languages BIB
PUBLISHED IN Proceedings of the Sixth International Workshop on Controlled Natural Language
PUBLISHER IOS Press
CONFERENCE PAPER
Shareable Subentries in Lexonomy as a Solution to the Problem of Multiword Item Placement BIB
EVENT EURALEX 2018
PUBLISHED IN Proceedings of the XVIII EURALEX International Congress: Lexicography in Global Contexts
TALK
Practical Post- Editing Lexicography with Lexonomy and Sketch Engine BIB
EVENT XVIII EURALEX International Congress: Lexicography in Global Contexts
2017
CONFERENCE PAPER
Introducing Lexonomy: an open-source dictionary writing and publishing system BIB
PUBLISHER Electronic lexicography in the 21st century: Proceedings of eLex 2017 conference
TALK
How (not) to build a European Dictionary Portal BIB
EVENT Final Conference of the European Network of e-Lexicography, Leiden
CAINT
Ar thairseach na haoise digití: mionteangacha agus an ríomhaireacht BIB
ÓCÁID ‘Ar an Imeall i Lár an Domhain?’: An tairseachúlacht i litríocht agus i gcultúr na hÉireann agus na hEorpa, Prág, Poblacht na Seice
TALK
Towards a Metadata Infrastructure for Online Dictionaries BIB
EVENT European Network of e-Lexicography, Budapest
2016
TALK
Towards a database of Irish surnames BIB
EVENT 25th Spring Conference of the Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland
TALK
Things to think about when building a dictionary website BIB
EVENT European Network of e-Lexicography, Barcelona, Catalonia
CONFERENCE PAPER
Data Structures in Lexicography: from Trees to Graphs BIB
PUBLISHED IN Recent Advances in Slavonic Natural Language Processing
2015
TALK
Do minority languages need the same language technology as majority languages? BIB
EVENT British-Irish Council conference on language technology in indigenous, minority and lesser-used languages, Dublin Castle, Ireland
REPORT
Introduction to Gramadán and the Irish National Morphology Database BIB
PUBLISHER Foras na Gaeilge
TUAIRISC
Bunachar Náisiúnta Moirfeolaíochta agus Gramadán: Doiciméadúchán Teicniúil BIB
FOILSITHEOIR Foras na Gaeilge
BLOG
Do minority languages need machine translation?
I want to bust the myth that machine translation is necessary for the revival of minority languages.
2014
CONFERENCE PAPER
Irish National Morphology Database: a high-accuracy open-source dataset of Irish words BIB
PUBLISHED IN Proceedings of the First Celtic Language Technology Workshop
BLOG
10 reasons why Irish is an absolutely awesome language
And these are proper linguistic reasons, too – none of that starry-eyed sentimental nonsense about the language being ‘beautiful’ or ‘romantic’.
Breathing new life into old data: how to retro-digitize a dictionary
What I learned from a project where we retro-digitized two Irish dictionaries and published them on the web.
2013
BLOG
The linguistic relativity of up and down
A nice and simple example of how learning a new language causes you to start perceiving the world differently.
2012
TALK
The logainm.ie Placenames Database of Ireland: Software demonstration BIB
EVENT Placenames Workshop 2012
CONFERENCE PAPER
Léacslann: a platform for building dictionary writing systems BIB
PUBLISHED IN Proceedings of the 15th Euralex International Congress
PUBLISHER University of Oslo
CAINT
Idir foclóir agus léarscáil: Bunachar Logainmneacha na hÉireann BIB
ÓCÁID Daonscoil na Mumhan, Waterford, Ireland
TALK
Landscapes, languages and data structures: Issues in building the Placenames Database of Ireland BIB
EVENT Digital Humanities Conference, Hamburg, Germany
2010
TALK
How to build a termbase for 500,000 users (and live to tell the story) BIB
EVENT Terminology and Knowledge Engineering (TKE) Conference, Dublin, Ireland
CONFERENCE PAPER
When definitions are not enough BIB
PUBLISHED IN Proceedings of Terminology and Knowledge Engineering (TKE) Conference
PUBLISHER Dublin City University
TALK
The Focal.ie National Terminology Database for Irish BIB
EVENT 14th Euralex International Congress, Ljouwert/Leeuwarden
CONFERENCE PAPER
What WordNet does not know about selectional preferences BIB
PUBLISHED IN Proceedings of the 14th Euralex International Congress
PUBLISHER Fryske Akademy
CAINT
Tabhair dom a bhfuil uaim: conas inneall cuardaigh a thógáil d'fhoclóir leictreonach BIB
ÓCÁID Imbolc, Baile Bhuirne, Ireland
BLOG
Living with a diacritic
No, this is not an article about living with an obscure illness. It’s an article about living with a name no-one can spell correctly.
2009
TALK
User-Friendliness: the key to promoting a minority language on the Internet BIB
EVENT 12th International Conference on Minority Languages, Tartu, Estonia
BLOG
Flags as language symbols – so what is the problem?
Using country flags as if they were language symbols is bad. So why does everybody keep on doing it? And is it really so bad?
Linguistic relativity: fact or wishful thinking?
Most linguists secretly wish the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis to be true. But is it?
2008
CONFERENCE PAPER
Giving them what they want: search strategies for electronic dictionaries BIB
PUBLISHED IN Proceedings of the 13th Euralex International Congress
PUBLISHER Universitat Pompeu Fabra
CAINT
Cá bhfuil mo shínte fada? – ionchódú téacs ar ríomhairí BIB
ÓCÁID Engineers Ireland, Dublin, Ireland
M.PHIL. DISSERTATION
Selectional Preferences, Corpora and Ontologies BIB
INSTITUTION Trinity College, University of Dublin
BLOG
Sub Specie Aeternitatis
Aiste leis an teangeolaí Seiceach Pavel Eisner a amharcann ar athbheochan na Seicise agus ar a bhfuil i ndán feasta di féin agus do mhionteangacha eile.
2007
2006
CONFERENCE PAPER
Finding the right structure for lexicographical data: experiences from a terminology project BIB
PUBLISHED IN Proceedings of the 13th Euralex International Congress
PUBLISHER Edizioni dell'Orso
LÁMHSCRÍBIHNN