Māori are trying to save their language from Big Tech

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/maori-language-tech

by sgift • 5 years ago

16 4 5 years ago

wired.co.uk

MikeUt• 5 years ago

Do: And now they want to sell our language back to us as a service.

Don't: Speech recognition algorithms may also have racial bias; Error rate for African American speech is nearly double that for others. [1]

[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/speech-recognition-a...

aurizon2• 5 years ago

This is not just a Maori problem. Many of the English dialects from the past 1000+ years have eroded and merged. Once the recording industry matured the seeds were sown for language dictatorships to emerge. Once radio and then TV matured, we (in the UK) were immersed in BBC English. Almost all the old speakers of these variants are now gone. The BBC did archive them and it is a fascinating site https://sounds.bl.uk/Accents-and-dialects/BBC-Voices

That said, the native Maori need to work together with commercial interests to succeed in this to avoid this - if they can....

nobodyandproud• 5 years ago

Why? Seed banks aren’t driven by commercial interests.

In fact, commercial interests have made agriculture very fragile and very monoculture.

I see the same problem with cultural languages, where there IS no benefit to the culture in question. Any commercialization by an outsider will be subject to what?

Patents? Copyright? Targeted ads? Imagine a maori teacher having to pay royalties to some company-X, just because wanted to teach their native language to their students?

aurizon2• 5 years ago

LOL, I am sure the current Maori group will hinder this. With carefully managed co-operation they should be able to make any local interest free. As for promotion, the local population is gradually being swamped by foreign contant in texts, books, airwaves and videos - people are voting with theur eyeballs. It may be i8mpossible to ever get a Maori literature, like French, German, English etc, but even those are being forced to fight against 'Franglais' . In a free country it may not ever be possible to eliminate 'majority imperialism' - people do what they like. How can they make their yound people like the Maori language and culture in such a way that it endures? That is the problem.

Māori are trying to save their language from Big Tech

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