Linguistics Justice League (LJL) recently participated in the Girlvolution event, organized by Powerful Voices in Seattle. LJL team members conducted a language survey at the event, gathering important data on language diversity in King County, Washington. This data shed light on the multicultural communities and linguistic richness within the state.

The event provided LJL with the opportunity to establish connections and collaborate with various organizations dedicated to social justice and inclusivity. Noteworthy organizations like Communities of Rooted Brilliance, The Vera Project, and Young Women Empowered were present, showcasing their impactful initiatives. LJL was deeply inspired by the commitment demonstrated by these organizations towards social justice and inclusivity.

Linguistics Justice League (LJL) made waves at the National Youth Leadership Council (NYLC) for Service-Learning Excellence Award conference in Nashville, Tennessee, where they were one of just five teams selected to attend with a full scholarship. Subha Vadlamannati, the founder of LJL, and Eshaan Barkataki, EduLang (a LJL product) co-chief technologist, presented their innovative project, EduLang, to an enthusiastic audience of government officials, organizational leaders, and strategic partners.

Linguistics Justice League (LJL) made waves at the National Youth Leadership Council (NYLC) for Service-Learning Excellence Award conference in Nashville, Tennessee, where they were one of just five teams selected to attend with a full scholarship. Subha Vadlamannati, the founder of LJL, and Eshaan Barkataki, EduLang (a LJL product) co-chief technologist, presented their innovative project, EduLang, to an enthusiastic audience of government officials, organizational leaders, and strategic partners.

EduLang is a multilingual storytelling library app that translates kids’ books into a staggering 108 languages, and during the conference, Subha and Eshaan shared their plans for scaling the app’s Text to Speech and Speech to Text infrastructure across multiple languages to improve reading comprehension and writing skills. One of the app’s key inventions is a scanner that allows users to scan PDF pages. These pages are autotranslated by the app into 108 languages using a machine translation API. The team has big plans for the future, including partnering with organizations to source better content and adding live tutoring through volunteers who speak low-resource languages. They also aim to use the latest NLP technology to create content to translate into low resourced languages.

At Linguistics Justice League, we’re proud to highlight and celebrate the incredible women who have made significant contributions to the field of linguistics, and especially those who have paved the way for a more diverse and inclusive future in the world of language and technology.

Did you know that many of the most innovative and influential voices in computational linguistics are women? From Karen Spärck Jones, who developed the concept of inverse document frequency, to Cynthia Breazeal, who is revolutionizing human-robot interaction, these women have made significant contributions to the field. Other notable names include Emily Bender, who developed the HPSG framework, and Kathleen McKeown, whose work on text summarization and natural language generation has had a significant impact on the field. Regina Barzilay has also made significant contributions to the field, particularly in the areas of machine learning and computational biology. Let’s celebrate these brilliant women and the contributions they have made to the world of computational linguistics!

UNESCO  recently celebrated International Mother Language Day. The day is meant to celebrate linguistic diversity and preservation. The theme of this year’s event was the role education can play in fostering multilingual communities and encouraging the use of native tongues. Unfortunately 40% of learners today do not have access to education in the language they understand! Educators and government entities across the world need to come up with a way to fund and enable multilingual education. We at Linguistics Justice League strive to provide multilingual content to language learns and support UNESCO’s efforts.

Did you know that the number of people in the US who speak a language other than English at home has nearly tripled in the past four decades? According to a recent report from the US Census Bureau, 22% of US residents (or 67.8 million people) now primarily use a language other than English at home, compared to just 10% (23.1 million) in 1980. While the number of English speakers has also grown, the growth has been much less significant. As the population of foreign language speakers grows, it’s likely that demand for improved language access will also increase.

LJL learned recently (Nov. 3 blog post) that Zoom added a new feature to make its video communication platform more accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing users by providing a specialized view for sign language interpreting on their meetings and webinars. The meeting host can arrange for a designated interpreter and participants can opt in to view the sign language interpreter in a separate viewing box.

Zoom introduced its live transcription and automatic translation features earlier this year and LJL applauds them for making these important accessibility enhancements to their offering!