| The International Conference 'Language Technologies for All (LT4All): Enabling Linguistic Diversity and Multilingualism Worldwide', which took place on December 4-6, 2019 at Unesco Headquarters in Paris in the framework of the International Year of Indigenous Languages (IYIL 2019), was sponsored by ISCA. The rationale of the conference was: 'How to improve the present situation where only 2% of the languages spoken over the world benefit from Language Technologies' ? Out of the 7,000+ language spoken around the world, only a few have associated Language Technologies. The majority of languages can be considered as 'under-resourced' or as 'not supported'. This situation, very detrimental to many languages speakers, and specifically indigenous languages speakers, creates a digital divide, and places many languages in danger of digital extinction, if not complete extinction.
Organized as part of the 2019 International Year of Indigenous Languages, the 1st edition of LT4All (Language Technologies for All: Enabling Linguistic Diversity and Multilingualism Worldwide) took place in Paris at the UNESCO Headquarters on December 4-6, 2019 and gathered 400 participants from various backgrounds (including language science and technology researchers, linguists, industrials, indigenous peoples, language policy and decision makers) from all over the world.
It allowed for fruitful exchanges between Language Technology providers and Language Policy makers, as it can be seen on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hashtag/lt4all The conference oral sessions were webcasted and can be replayed, in English and French: see https://en.unesco.org/LT4All
The LT4All Programme and Editorial Committees are very happy to announce that the set of Research Papers and Posters collected at the occasion of LT4All is now available online at : https://lt4all.elra.info/proceedings/lt4all2019/
**** LT4All has been made possible thanks to the close cooperation between UNESCO, the Government of the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug-Ugra (Russian Federation), the European Language Resources Association (ELRA) and its Special Interest Group on Under-resourced languages (SIGUL), and in partnership with UNESCO Intergovernmental Information for All Programme (IFAP) and the Interregional Library Cooperation Centre, as well as with support of other public organizations, including ISCA, and sponsors.
More information including the list of all the sponsors and supporters @ https://en.unesco.org/LT4All |