Support to Catalan language in the digital environment

Catalan, as a minority language, has a set of conditions when it comes to its use in the digital environment. If we compare the digital content in Catalan with that of other languages such as English, Mandarin Chinese or Spanish, we can quickly see this fact. Large technology companies, in some cases, tend to give little coverage to minority languages, translating and adapting only the most basic or common content, such as the user interfaces of computer or mobile phone operating systems, or the most commonly used office applications. If we go beyond these items, we can see that the presence of these minority languages is practically negligible and, in cases such as voice assistants, practically non-existent.

We have undertaken a set of initiatives that are focused on understanding the status of our official language in the digital context, as well as supporting various activities and projects that aim to maintain Catalan as a living language in this area. We are currently working on:

• Collaboration with the Ministry of Youth, Culture and Sports and the Department of Linguistic Policy in all those initiatives that are linked to the monitoring and support of Catalan in the digital environment.
• Contributions in multilateral regulatory environments such as UNESCO or the Council of Europe, on the use of the language in the field of technology, mainly in artificial intelligence systems.

            UNESCO's Recommendation on the ethics of AI
            CoE's Proposal for a Convention on AI, Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law

• Provision of written and sound sources in Catalan of the dialectal variant of Andorra to train large language models (LLMs) such as those of the ILENIA and AiNA projects (through the Barcelona Supercomputing Center).

            ILENIA Project
            AiNA Project