Designing Speech Technologies for Australian Aboriginal English: Opportunities, Risks and Participation

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2503.03186v2
• Date: Wed, 02 Apr 2025 03:46:13 GMT
• Title: Designing Speech Technologies for Australian Aboriginal English: Opportunities, Risks and Participation
• Authors: Ben Hutchinson, Celeste Rodríguez Louro, Glenys Collard, Ned Cooper,
• Abstract summary: Post-contact language varieties emerged in Australia as a result of forced contact between Indigenous communities and English speakers.<n>These contact varieties are widely used, yet are poorly supported by language technologies.<n>This gap presents barriers to participation in civil and economic society for Indigenous communities using these varieties.
• Score: 1.7625047963881761
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: In Australia, post-contact language varieties, including creoles and local varieties of international languages, emerged as a result of forced contact between Indigenous communities and English speakers. These contact varieties are widely used, yet are poorly supported by language technologies. This gap presents barriers to participation in civil and economic society for Indigenous communities using these varieties, and reproduces minoritisation of contemporary Indigenous sociolinguistic identities. This paper concerns three questions regarding this context. First, can speech technologies support speakers of Australian Aboriginal English, a local indigenised variety of English? Second, what risks are inherent in such a project? Third, what technology development practices are appropriate for this context, and how can researchers integrate meaningful community participation in order to mitigate risks? We argue that opportunities do exist -- as well as risks -- and demonstrate this through a case study exploring design practices in a real-world project aiming to improve speech technologies for Australian Aboriginal English. We discuss how we integrated culturally appropriate and participatory processes throughout the project. We call for increased support for languages used by Indigenous communities, including contact varieties, which provide practical economic and socio-cultural benefits, provided that participatory and culturally safe practices are enacted.

Related papers

• Redefining technology for indigenous languages [0.0]
  We offer an overview of indigenous languages, identifying the causes of their devaluation and the need for legislation on language rights. We review the technologies used to revitalize these languages, finding that when they come from outside, they often have the opposite effect to what they seek. We propose that the inclusion of Indigenous knowledge in large language models (LLMs) will enrich the technological landscape, but must be done in a participatory environment.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2025-04-02T09:08:53Z)
• LIMBA: An Open-Source Framework for the Preservation and Valorization of Low-Resource Languages using Generative Models [62.47865866398233]
  This white paper proposes a framework to generate linguistic tools for low-resource languages. By addressing the data scarcity that hinders intelligent applications for such languages, we contribute to promoting linguistic diversity.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-11-20T16:59:41Z)
• A Capabilities Approach to Studying Bias and Harm in Language Technologies [4.135516576952934]
  We consider fairness, bias, and inclusion in Language Technologies through the lens of the Capabilities Approach. The Capabilities Approach centers on what people are capable of achieving, given their intersectional social, political, and economic contexts. We detail the Capabilities Approach, its relationship to multilingual and multicultural evaluation, and how the framework affords meaningful collaboration with community members in defining and measuring the harms of Language Technologies.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-11-06T22:46:13Z)
• The Call for Socially Aware Language Technologies [94.6762219597438]
  We argue that many of these issues share a common core: a lack of awareness of the factors, context, and implications of the social environment in which NLP operates.<n>We argue that substantial challenges remain for NLP to develop social awareness and that we are just at the beginning of a new era for the field.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-05-03T18:12:39Z)
• NLP Progress in Indigenous Latin American Languages [44.8359369488204]
  The paper focuses on the marginalization of indigenous language communities in the face of rapid technological advancements. We highlight the cultural richness of these languages and the risk they face of being overlooked in the realm of Natural Language Processing.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-04-08T10:04:55Z)
• "It's how you do things that matters": Attending to Process to Better Serve Indigenous Communities with Language Technologies [2.821682550792172]
  This position paper explores ethical considerations in building NLP technologies for Indigenous languages. We report on interviews with 17 researchers working in or with Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander communities. We recommend practices for NLP researchers to increase attention to the process of engagements with Indigenous communities.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-02-04T23:23:51Z)
• How can NLP Help Revitalize Endangered Languages? A Case Study and Roadmap for the Cherokee Language [91.79339725967073]
  More than 43% of the languages spoken in the world are endangered. In this work, we focus on discussing how NLP can help revitalize endangered languages. We take Cherokee, a severely-endangered Native American language, as a case study.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2022-04-25T18:25:57Z)
• Not always about you: Prioritizing community needs when developing endangered language technology [5.670857685983896]
  We discuss the unique technological, cultural, practical, and ethical challenges that researchers and indigenous speech community members face. We report the perspectives of language teachers, Master Speakers and elders from indigenous communities, as well as the point of view of academics.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2022-04-12T05:59:39Z)
• A Summary of the First Workshop on Language Technology for Language Documentation and Revitalization [70.14668193220528]
  In August 2019, a workshop was held at Carnegie Mellon University to attempt to bring together language community members, documentary linguists, and technologists. This paper reports the results of the workshop, including issues discussed, and various conceived and implemented technologies for nine languages.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2020-04-27T22:55:55Z)
• Experience Grounds Language [185.73483760454454]
  Language understanding research is held back by a failure to relate language to the physical world it describes and to the social interactions it facilitates. Despite the incredible effectiveness of language processing models to tackle tasks after being trained on text alone, successful linguistic communication relies on a shared experience of the world.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2020-04-21T16:56:27Z)

This list is automatically generated from the titles and abstracts of the papers in this site.

This site does not guarantee the quality of this site (including all information) and is not responsible for any consequences.