This paper introduces EasyTree, a dynamic graphical tool for dependency tree annotation. Built in JavaScript using the popular D3 data visualization library, EasyTree allows annotators to construct and label trees entirely by manipulating graphics, and then export the corresponding data in JSON format. Human users are thus able to annotate in an intuitive way without compromising the machine-compatibility of the output. EasyTree has a number of features to assist annotators, including color-coded part-of-speech indicators and optional translation displays. It can also be customized to suit a wide range of projects; part-of-speech categories, edge labels, and many other settings can be edited from within the GUI. The system also utilizes UTF-8 encoding and properly handles both left-to-right and right-to-left scripts. By providing a user-friendly annotation tool, we aim to reduce time spent transforming data or learning to use the software, to improve the user experience for annotators, and to make annotation approachable even for inexperienced users. Unlike existing solutions, EasyTree is built entirely with standard web technologies--JavaScript, HTML, and CSS--making it ideal for web-based annotation efforts, including crowdsourcing efforts.
@InProceedings{LITTLE16.550,
author = {Alexa Little and Stephen Tratz}, title = {EasyTree: A Graphical Tool for Dependency Tree Annotation}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2016)}, year = {2016}, month = {may}, date = {23-28}, location = {Portorož, Slovenia}, editor = {Nicoletta Calzolari (Conference Chair) and Khalid Choukri and Thierry Declerck and Sara Goggi and Marko Grobelnik and Bente Maegaard and Joseph Mariani and Helene Mazo and Asuncion Moreno and Jan Odijk and Stelios Piperidis}, publisher = {European Language Resources Association (ELRA)}, address = {Paris, France}, isbn = {978-2-9517408-9-1}, language = {english} }
Summary of the paper