Layers of technology in pluriversal design decolonising language technology with the live language initiative

ABSTRACT

Language technology has the potential to facilitate intercultural communication through meaningful translations. However, the current state of language technology is deeply entangled with colonial knowledge due to path dependencies and neo-colonial tendencies in the global governance of artificial intelligence (AI). Language technology is a complex and emerging field that presents challenges for co-design interventions due to enfolding in assemblages of global scale and diverse sites and its knowledge intensity. This paper uses LiveLanguage, a lexical database, a set of services with particular emphasis on modelling language diversity and integrating small and minority languages, as an example to discuss and close the gap from pluriversal design theory to practice. By diversifying the concept of emerging technology, we can better approach language technology in global contexts. The paper presents a model comprising of five layers of technological activity. Each layer consists of specific practices and stakeholders, thus provides distinctive spaces for co-design interventions as mode of inquiry for de-linking, re-thinking and re-building language technology towards pluriversality. In that way, the paper contributes to reflecting the position of co-design in decolonising emergent technologies, and to integrating complex theoretical knowledge towards decoloniality into language technology design.

KEYWORDS:

• Knowledge ecologies
• language diversity
• AI artificial intelligence
• colonial triangle
• value-sensitive design

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. We thank the reviewers for their valuable feedback, which was both critical and supportive. The advice and questions we received prompted productive reflections on the empirical and theoretical aspects of decolonisation, co-design, and participation. They were greatly helpful in developing our argument.

2. https://lt4all.elra.info/proceedings/lt4all2019/2019.lt4all-1.0.pdf

3. In the initiative ‘Language Technology for All’ such collaborations are supported by the UNESCO, https://lt4all.org/en/index.html, 24.02.2024.

4. See exemplary Winschiers-Theophilus et al. (2019).

5. Model by Gertraud Koch.

6. http://ukc.datascientia.eu/concept

7. For a detailed information see https://datascientiafoundation.github.io/LiveLanguage/