Language Equality In The Digital Age Towards A Human Language Project

The EU is a unique endeavour involving more than 500 million citizens sharing about 80 different languages, and while multilingualism is a key feature, it is also one of the most substantial challenges for the creation of a truly integrated EU. Language barriers have a profound effect on cross-border public services, on fostering a common European identity, on workers' mobility, and on cross-border e-commerce and trade, in the context of a Digital Single Market. The emergence of new technological approaches, based on increased computational power and access to sizeable amounts of data, are making Human Language Technologies (HLT) a real solution to overcoming language barriers. However, several challenges, such as market fragmentation and unsubstantial and uncoordinated funding strategies, are hindering the European HLT community, including research and industry.

In the digital era, language barriers represent a major challenge preventing European citizens and businesses from fully benefiting from a truly integrated Europe. These barriers particularly affect the less educated and older population, as well as speakers of smaller and minority languages, thus creating a notable language divide. Language barriers have a profound effect on (1) cross-border public services, (2) fostering a common European identity, (3) workers' mobility, and (4) cross-border e-commerce and trade, in the context of a Digital Single Market. The emergence of new technological approaches such as deep-learning neural networks, based on increased computational power and access to sizeable amounts of data, are making Human Language Technologies (HLT) a real solution to overcoming language barriers. However, several factors, such as market fragmentation, uncoordinated research and insufficient funding, are hindering the European HLT industry, while putting underresourced languages in danger of digital extinction. Moreover, language technologies are not properly represented in the agenda of European policy-makers, although they are likely to be crucial for the construction of a fair and truly integrated European Union. Based on the analysis of the current state of affairs, we argue for setting up a multidisciplinary large-scale coordinated initiative, the European Human Language Project (HLP). Within the HLP, eleven policies are proposed and assessed. These policies are grouped into: institutional policies, research policies, industry policies, market policies, and public service policies.

This open access book presents a comprehensive collection of the European Language Equality (ELE) project’s results, its strategic agenda and roadmap with key recommendations to the European Union on how to achieve digital language equality in Europe by 2030. The fabric of the EU linguistic landscape comprises 24 official languages and over 60 regional and minority languages. However, language barriers still hamper communication and the free flow of information. Multilingualism is a key cultural cornerstone of Europe, signifying what it means to be and to feel European. Various studies and resolutions have found a striking imbalance in the support of Europe’s languages through technologies, issuing a call to action. Following an introduction, the book is divided into two parts. The first part describes the state of the art of language technology and language-centric AI and the definition and metrics developed to measure digital language equality. It also presents the status quo in 2022/2023, i.e., the current level of technology support for over 30 European languages. The second part describes plans and recommendations on how to bring about digital language equality in Europe by 2030. It includes chapters on the setup and results of the community consultation process, four technical deep dives, an overview of existing strategic documents and an abridged version of the strategic agenda and roadmap. The recommendations have been prepared jointly with the European community in the fields of language technology, natural language processing, and language-centric AI, as well as with representatives of relevant initiatives and associations, language communities and regional and minority language groups. Ensuring appropriate technology support for all European languages will not only create jobs, growth and opportunities in the digital single market. Overcoming language barriers in the digital environment is also essential for an inclusive society and for providing unity in diversity for many years to come.

This open access book provides an in-depth description of the EU project European Language Grid (ELG). Its motivation lies in the fact that Europe is a multilingual society with 24 official European Union Member State languages and dozens of additional languages including regional and minority languages. The only meaningful way to enable multilingualism and to benefit from this rich linguistic heritage is through Language Technologies (LT) including Natural Language Processing (NLP), Natural Language Understanding (NLU), Speech Technologies and language-centric Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications. The European Language Grid provides a single umbrella platform for the European LT community, including research and industry, effectively functioning as a virtual home, marketplace, showroom, and deployment centre for all services, tools, resources, products and organisations active in the field. Today the ELG cloud platform already offers access to more than 13,000 language processing tools and language resources. It enables all stakeholders to deposit, upload and deploy their technologies and datasets. The platform also supports the long-term objective of establishing digital language equality in Europe by 2030 – to create a situation in which all European languages enjoy equal technological support. This is the very first book dedicated to Language Technology and NLP platforms. Cloud technology has only recently matured enough to make the development of a platform like ELG feasible on a larger scale. The book comprehensively describes the results of the ELG project. Following an introduction, the content is divided into four main parts: (I) ELG Cloud Platform; (II) ELG Inventory of Technologies and Resources; (III) ELG Community and Initiative; and (IV) ELG Open Calls and Pilot Projects.

Training institutions offering specialized translation and interpreting programs need to keep up with the rapid development of digitalization and the increasingly sophisticated requirements of the language industry. This book addresses digital trends and employability in the market from the aspect of training: how have the latest digital trends shaped the language industry, and what competencies will translators, interpreters and T/I trainers need so as to meet current market requirements? Four major subjects of high relevance are discussed in 12 chapters: (1) collaborative partnership in the field of fit-for-market practices with a focus on e-learning materials; (2) competence development in translator and interpreter training; (3) the implications of neural machine translation and the increasing significance of post-editing practices, as well as (4) the role of new technologies and new methods in the work and training of interpreters and translators. With an introduction written by Juanjo Arevalillo, managing director of Hermes Traducciones and former vice-president of the European Union of Associations of Translation Companies, the book creates a fresh momentum for researchers, academics, professionals and trainees to be engaged in a constructive dialogue.

This collected volume brings together the contributions of several humanities scholars who focus on the evolution of language in the digital era. The first part of the volume explores general aspects of humanities and linguistics in the digital environment. The second part focuses on language and translation and includes topics that discuss the digital translation policy, new technologies and specialised translation, online resources for terminology management, translation of online advertising, or subtitling. The last part of the book focuses on language teaching and learning and addresses the changes, challenges and perspectives of didactics in the age of technology. Each contribution is divided into several sections that present the state of the art and the methodology used, and discuss the results and perspectives of the authors. The book is recommended to scholars, professionals, students and anyone interested in the changes within the humanities in conjunction with technological innovation or in the ways language is adapting to the challenges of today’s digitized world.

Language is a natural resource: Power and vulnerability are associated with access to language, just as to food and water. In this new book, a linguist and philosopher elucidate why language is so powerful, illuminate its very real social and political implications, and make the case for linguistic equality—equality among languages and equality in access to/knowledge of language and its use—as a human right and tool to prevent violence and oppression. Students and instructors will find this accessible, interdisciplinary text invaluable for courses that explore how language reflects power structures in linguistics, philosophy/ethics, and cognitive science/psychology.

More than 40 percent of the world’s estimated 7,100+ languages are in danger of disappearing by the end of this century. As with the decline of biodiversity, language loss has been attributed to environmental degradation, developmentalism, and the destruction of Indigenous communities. This book brings together leading experts and younger scholars across the humanities and social sciences to investigate what global language justice looks like in a time of climate crisis. Examining the worldwide loss of linguistic diversity, they develop a new conception of justice to safeguard marginalized languages. Global Language Justice explores the socioeconomic transformations that both accelerate the decline of minoritized languages and give rise to new possibilities through population movement, unexpected encounters, and technological change. It also critically examines the concepts that are typically deployed to defend linguistic diversity, including human rights, inclusiveness, and equality. Contributors take up topics such as mapping language communities in New York City or how Indigenous innovation challenges notions of linguistic purity. They demonstrate the need to reckon with linguistic diversity in order to achieve a sustainable global economic system and show how the concept of digital vitality can push language justice in new directions. Interspersed with their essays are multilingual works by world-renowned poets and artists that engage with and deepen the book’s themes. Integrating ambitious theoretical exploration with concrete solutions, Global Language Justice offers vital new perspectives on the place of linguistic diversity in ongoing ecological crises.

In everyday communication, Europe’s citizens, business partners and politicians are inevitably confronted with language barriers. Language technology has the potential to overcome these barriers and to provide innovative interfaces to technologies and knowledge. This document presents a Strategic Research Agenda for Multilingual Europe 2020. The agenda was prepared by META-NET, a European Network of Excellence. META-NET consists of 60 research centres in 34 countries, who cooperate with stakeholders from economy, government agencies, research organisations, non-governmental organisations, language communities and European universities. META-NET’s vision is high-quality language technology for all European languages. “The research carried out in the area of language technology is of utmost importance for the consolidation of Portuguese as a language of global communication in the information society.” — Dr. Pedro Passos Coelho (Prime-Minister of Portugal) “It is imperative that language technologies for Slovene are developed systematically if we want Slovene to flourish also in the future digital world.” — Dr. Danilo Türk (President of the Republic of Slovenia) “For such small languages like Latvian keeping up with the ever increasing pace of time and technological development is crucial. The only way to ensure future existence of our language is to provide its users with equal opportunities as the users of larger languages enjoy. Therefore being on the forefront of modern technologies is our opportunity.” — Valdis Dombrovskis (Prime Minister of Latvia) “Europe’s inherent multilingualism and our scientific expertise are the perfect prerequisites for significantly advancing the challenge that language technology poses. META-NET opens up new opportunities for the development of ubiquitous multilingual technologies.” — Prof. Dr. Annette Schavan (German Minister of Education and Research)

This book discusses how new technologies have the potential to revolutionise the documentation, analysis and revitalisation of endangered languages for the linguist and indigenous community alike. It addresses the challenges that come with these new resources and debates how their application may be advanced.