The Indigenous Languages Technology project at NRC Canada: An empowerment-oriented approach to developing language software (2020.coling-main)
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Roland Kuhn, Fineen Davis, Alain Désilets, Eric Joanis, Anna Kazantseva, Rebecca Knowles, Patrick Littell, Delaney Lothian, Aidan Pine, Caroline Running Wolf, Eddie Santos, Darlene Stewart, Gilles Boulianne, Vishwa Gupta, Brian Maracle Owennatékha, Akwiratékha’ Martin, Christopher Cox, Marie-Odile Junker, Olivia Sammons, Delasie Torkornoo, Nathan Thanyehténhas Brinklow, Sara Child, Benoît Farley, David Huggins-Daines, Daisy Rosenblum, Heather Souter
| Challenge: | This paper describes the first, three-year phase of a project at the National Research Council of Canada that is developing software to assist Indigenous communities in preserving their languages and extending their use. |
| Approach: | They describe the first phase of a project at the National Research Council of Canada that is developing software to assist Indigenous communities in preserving their languages. |
| Outcome: | The proposed software will help Indigenous communities preserve and revitalize their languages and extend their use. |
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Patrick Littell, Anna Kazantseva, Roland Kuhn, Aidan Pine, Antti Arppe, Christopher Cox, Marie-Odile Junker
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| Challenge: | Indigenous languages have been considered low-resource and/or endangered . authors propose a method to revitalize the language spoken in northern canada . |
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| Challenge: | low-resource languages lack the quantity of data needed to train statistical and machine learning tools and models. |
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Atnafu Tonja, Fazlourrahman Balouchzahi, Sabur Butt, Olga Kolesnikova, Hector Ceballos, Alexander Gelbukh, Thamar Solorio
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Decolonising Speech and Language Technology (2020.coling-main)
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| Challenge: | Indigenous peoples are increasingly unable to go on without speech and language technologies, says a researcher . a postcolonial approach to computational methods for supporting language vitality is needed, says the researcher - lil'watul Lorna Williams . |
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Visibility as Survival: Generalizing NLP for Native Alaskan Language Identification (2025.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Indigenous languages are largely invisible in commercial language identification systems, a stark reality exemplified by Google Translate’s LangID tool, which excludes all 150 Indigenous languages of North America. |
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