From October 15 to 17, 2025, the 13th international conference SLOVKO 2025 – Natural Language Processing and Corpus Linguistics, organized by the Ľudovít Štúr Institute of Linguistics of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, took place at the Devín Hotel in Bratislava. The conference continued the more than twenty-year tradition of SLOVKO events, which represent an important platform for the exchange of knowledge in the field of natural language processing, corpus linguistics, lexicography, and language technologies.
Dr. Filip Kalaš from the Faculty of Applied Languages and Ing. Pavol Lipták from the Faculty of Commerce actively represented the Bratislava University of Economics and Business. Together, they presented a study entitled "AI and the Translation of Idioms – Challenges, Success, and a Corpus Perspective." The research analyzed the ability of artificial intelligence to translate English idioms into Slovak, with and without context, and highlighted the limitations of current models in interpreting phraseological meanings.
The event focused on the interconnection between linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence, with experts from Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Austria, Croatia, Germany, and Ukraine participating.
Plenary lectures were presented by Aleksandar Trklja (University of Innsbruck) on the topic of Mapping Recurrent Lexico-grammatical Patterns in English Through Subtree Fragments and Thomas Hoffmann (Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt) on Constructional Creativity – The Role of Corpus Data.
In addition to the plenary sessions, the conference featured more than thirty expert presentations on topics such as automatic text annotation, AI-supported translation and proofreading systems, corpus semantics, pseudonymization, and lexicographic databases.
As part of the conference, our academics also attended a gala reception, which provided an opportunity for informal discussions and renewing professional contacts. We had the opportunity to meet again with colleagues such as Dr. Hanka Žižková (Masaryk University), Dr. Jana Levická (Slovak Academy of Sciences), and Dr. Anita Braxatorisová (University of St. Cyril and Methodius), with whom we discussed further research collaboration. The reception took place in a friendly atmosphere, with the organizers sparing no expense in their hospitality and providing excellent food and informal networking opportunities.
The SLOVKO 2025 conference confirmed that linking linguistics with artificial intelligence technologies is the key to innovative solutions in translation, lexicography, and marketing communication. The knowledge gained will be used in the further development of research in the field of AI-supported translation of idioms and in the modernization of technical and commercial language teaching.
