Rural Asia Human Language Technology

Asia is home to hundreds of distinct languages, many of which have little access to the global--or even national--marketplace of information. The speakers of smaller, marginalized languages do not always speak or read the larger, more well-known languages that surround them, and perhaps no one outside their communities speaks theirs. Human Language Technology (HLT) uses multiple tools as it works to bridge those gaps. The Rural Asia HLT project exists to empower speakers of under-resourced languages as they connect with the rest of the world and find the information they need without devaluing their own languages.

Because of our belief that these speakers deserve to have their own voices heard, this project places a high value on training local partners to develop and use these tools in their own communities. Putting the onus of the project where it belongs and can best thrive--in the hands of the locals--allows our project to work with multiple language communities across rural Asia, enabling the transformative impacts of a more connected Asia to spread across the region.