TECH EXTENDS A HELPING HAND

Technology companies are showing great interest in endangered languages. This is because they are realising that content on the Internet is overwhelmingly English and that is stopping them from acquiring new nonenglish speaking users. So Google has an endangered languages project, a platform for interested people to share research and collaborate on endangered languages. Microsoft too sees language technology as a vehicle to provide Internet access to speakers of endangered languages. “We can make the documentation less laborious by providing tools such as an interface on mobile phones to record and annotate the language, or input mechanisms such as language keyboards,” says Kalika Bali, researcher, Microsoft Research India. They can also help to make web content available in these languages directly or through speech interfaces.