Computational Development of Lesser Resourced Languages Martin Hosken WSTech, SIL International © 2019, SIL International Modern Technical Capability l Grammar checking l Wikipedia l OCR l Localisation l Text to speech l Speech to text l Machine Translation © 2019, SIL International Digital Language Vitality l 0.2% doing well − 43% world population l 78% score nothing! − ~10% population © 2019, SIL International Simons and Thomas, 2019 Climbing from the Bottom l Language Tag l Linebreaking l Unicode encoding l Locale Information l Font − Character Lists − Sort order l Keyboard − physical l Content − phone © 2019, SIL International Language Tag l Unique orthography l lng – ISO639 identifier l Scrp – ISO 15924 l Structure: l RE – ISO 3166-1 − lng-Scrp-RE-variants − ahk = ahk-Latn-MM − https://ldml.api.sil.org/langtags.json BCP 47 © 2019, SIL International Language Tags l Variants l Policy Issues − dialect/language − ISO 639 is linguistic − orthography/script − Language tags are sociolinguistic − registration/private use © 2019, SIL International Unicode Encoding l Engineering detail l Policy Issues l Almost all scripts in − Use Unicode − Publish Orthography l Find a char Descriptions − Sequences are good l Implies an orthography © 2019, SIL International Fonts l Lots of fonts! l Policy Issues l SIL Fonts − Ensure industry support − Full script coverage − Encourage free fonts l Problems − adding fonts to phones © 2019, SIL− InternationalNoto styling Keyboards l Keyman l Wider industry − All platforms − More capable standard − Predictive text − More industry interest − Open Source − IDE © 2019, SIL International Keyboards l Policy Issues − Agreed layout l Per language l Physical & Mobile © 2019, SIL International Linebreaking l Unsolved problem l Word frequencies − Integration − open access − Description − same as for predictive text l Resources © 2019, SIL International Locale Information l A deep well! l Key terms l Unicode CLDR l Sorting − Industry base data l Dates, Times, etc. l SLDR © 2019, SIL International Content l Literacy l Crowd sourcing − For what purpose? − Wikipedia l Local Writers − Comedy − Translation © 2019, SIL International Bibliography l 2019 Simons and Thomas “Assessing Digital Language Support as a Factor in Language Vitality” given at 6th International Conference on Language Document and Conservation, University of Hawaii, Manoa l 2019 Internet World Users by Language https://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm l 2009 Phillips, Davis Ed.BCP 47: Tags for Identifying Languages (RFC5646, RFC4647) l Unicode Technical Standard 35: Unicode Locale Data Markup (LDML) https://unicode.org/reports/tr35/tr35.html#Contents.