New markets for Language Technology for minority languages

Language Technology offers significant opportunities for minority languages and can be a major force in addressing and alleviating some of the difficulties they face. For minority languages in particular, speech and language technology are a powerful means to bring together speakers' communities, to have a major impact on language learning support, to promote inclusion of elderly or impaired people and to foster widespread use of a language through digital means. In this talk, we will be presenting first the main outcomes of the research carried out by the META-NET project, resulting in the publication of the White Paper Series "Europe's Languages in the Digital Age". The series, that reports on the state of each European language with respect to Language Technology, offers an updated synthesis of the most urgent risks and chances faced, in particular, by less-serviced languages. The presentation will then provide concrete examples of LT solutions for minority languages, discussing their potential impact on those languages, in particular with regard to their role for language maintenance and preservation in the eyes of the younger, digitally-oriented generation.