My memory is short but my time at the University of Helsinki has been even shorter so far, which does not make it easy to select a special moment I remember from being here. Nevertheless, I recall a special moment that involved at least one colleague from here.

Five years ago I was invited to give a talk on language technology at a symposium on methodological advances in translation studies (MATS) in Ghent. I was surprised and a bit skeptical about the wish for my presence there as a graduated computer scientist who has been carried over to the humanities only through the very computational part of linguistics.

The organizers, however, convinced me that my presentation indeed was meant to improve their contacts with language technology. So, I adapted Lauri Karttunen’s story of the “computational knight who is rejected by the princess of theory at the court of linguistics” to set off my talk about the missing link between linguists and language technology. In my version I introduced the “research peasant who is digging in the dirt” (meaning data) to help the knight to win the heart of the princess but in the end he defeated them both through the “empirical revolution”.

Long story short, I was pleasantly surprised to see the positive effect of this silly introduction. People at the conference repeatedly referred back to the story and, in the end, the last invited speaker, Andrew Chesterman from the University of Helsinki, even continued the story to sum up the conference. A nice memory, indeed.