Donostia, 12 June 2019

The Elhuyar Foundation has organized a conference on “Linguistic technologies in the municipalities of Gipuzkoa” in the Miramar Palace of Donostia.

Representatives of several municipalities of Gipuzkoa, the Deputy Minister of Linguistic Policy of the Basque Government, Miren Dobaran Urrutia, and the Director of Promotion of the Basque Country, Estibaliz Alkorta Barragán, and the Director of the Linguistic Resources Service of Euskarabide, Ander Irizar Apaolaza, among others, spoke about the usefulness of technologies.

The day began at 10:00 with the intervention of Juanjo Pérez Martínez de Lahidalga, responsible for linguistic planning of Elhuyar. As he explained, “thanks to the advances that are being made in the field of linguistic technologies, what until now was impossible in Basque or was not achieved to basic quality parameters, is now possible or we are very close”. To advance linguistic normalization, linguistic technologies are an unbeatable journey, since they “help to create in Basque, to guarantee the understanding of those who do not know Basque and to optimize the translation processes. They can also help us achieve inclusion and accessibility.”

After Perez, take the word Itziar Cortés Etxabe, head of translation technologies at Elhuyar. He highlights that “machine translation systems between Basque and Spanish are obtaining results of different quality than the current ones” and explains two areas of application of machine translation in the municipalities of Gipuzkoa. On the one hand, he said that “machine translation systems serve to encourage bilingual creation”. On the other hand, “by integrating into document translation processes, they are of great help to translators.” However, he stressed that these tools are “of responsible use”, “the system is automatic and we cannot trust blindly”.

Behind Cortés, Igor Leturia Azkarate, head of speech technologies at Elhuyar, explained that in recent times “great advances have been made in the synthesis and knowledge of speech in Basque” thanks to neural networks and deep learning techniques. These technologies, integrated into the activity of a City Council, have numerous applications, especially in terms of accessibility and inclusion. In speech synthesis, on the one hand, “instead of reading websites, we have a multilingual listening tool.” On the other hand, “we have a travel system to make accessible routes and museums (bidaide.elhuyar.eus)”. In the knowledge of speech, “it is already possible to obtain transcriptions and subtitles ordered automatically also in Basque”. That is, “to collect the minutes of the meetings of the City Council and the commissions, for example, we can automatically transcribe the audios and use machine translation to change language”.

Finally, we have been able to know two examples of success cases in the municipalities of Gipuzkoa by the linguistic technologies exposed by the members of Elhuyar. On the one hand, Karlos de Olmo Serna, responsible for translators of the City of San Sebastian, explained that in the City of San Sebastian they use two systems of “machine translation”. On the one hand, they use Modela.eus to help create bilingual texts. On the other hand, the automatic translators of Spanish>Basque and Basque>use Spanish integrated in their OLI tool. Thus, “translators, during their work, in addition to phrases per sentence, the proposals of translation memories, receive automatic translations that greatly optimize the work of translators”.

On the other hand, the acting mayor of Usurbil, Xabier Arregi Iparragirre, explained that they have used the Bidaia system to make accessible and inclusive the route “Harria Hitz” in Usurbil. “Harria Hitz is now an accessible route for everyone through a mobile app, taking into account functional diversity. Visitors receive the information and guidelines to advance the tour adapted to their needs and in the chosen language.”

It has become clear that linguistic technologies will be an ally in the normalization of Basque, and that municipalities have a great opportunity.

The day ended with a small lunch between speakers and attendees.

Program

10:00 → Reception. Together with linguistic technologies, the normalization of Basque before a revolution

Speaker: Juanjo Pérez Martínez de Lahidalga, head of linguistic planning at Elhuyar.

10:15 → Machine translation and linguistic quality

Speaker: Itziar Cortés Etxabe, head of translation technologies at Elhuyar.

11:00 → Applications of speech technologies: automatic conversion of voice into text and accessibility

Speaker: Igor Leturia Azkarate, head of speech technologies at Elhuyar.

11:45 → Success Stories

Karlos del Olmo Serna: machine translation at the City of San Sebastian.

Xabier Arregi Iparragirre: Application of travel, inclusive and accessible tourist itineraries on the “Harria Hitz” tour of Usurbil.

12:30 – Lunch

linguistic technologies. Contact information