Challenges and Perspectives for Innu-Aimun within Indigenous Language Technologies

Antoine Cadotte, Tan Le Ngoc, Mathieu Boivin, Fatiha Sadat


Abstract
Innu-Aimun is an Algonquian language spoken in Eastern Canada. It is the language of the Innu, an Indigenous people that now lives for the most part in a dozen communities across Quebec and Labrador. Although it is alive, Innu-Aimun sees important preservation and revitalization challenges and issues. The state of its technology is still nascent, with very few existing applications. This paper proposes a first survey of the available linguistic resources and existing technology for Innu-Aimun. Considering the existing linguistic and textual resources, we argue that developing language technology is feasible and propose first steps towards NLP applications like machine translation. The goal of developing such technologies is first and foremost to help efforts in improving language transmission and cultural safety and preservation for Innu-Aimun speakers, as those are considered urgent and vital issues. Finally, we discuss the importance of close collaboration and consultation with the Innu community in order to ensure that language technologies are developed respectfully and in accordance with that goal.
Anthology ID:
2022.computel-1.13
Volume:
Proceedings of the Fifth Workshop on the Use of Computational Methods in the Study of Endangered Languages
Month:
May
Year:
2022
Address:
Dublin, Ireland
Editors:
Sarah Moeller, Antonios Anastasopoulos, Antti Arppe, Aditi Chaudhary, Atticus Harrigan, Josh Holden, Jordan Lachler, Alexis Palmer, Shruti Rijhwani, Lane Schwartz
Venue:
ComputEL
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
99–108
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2022.computel-1.13
DOI:
10.18653/v1/2022.computel-1.13
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Antoine Cadotte, Tan Le Ngoc, Mathieu Boivin, and Fatiha Sadat. 2022. Challenges and Perspectives for Innu-Aimun within Indigenous Language Technologies. In Proceedings of the Fifth Workshop on the Use of Computational Methods in the Study of Endangered Languages, pages 99–108, Dublin, Ireland. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Challenges and Perspectives for Innu-Aimun within Indigenous Language Technologies (Cadotte et al., ComputEL 2022)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2022.computel-1.13.pdf
Video:
 https://aclanthology.org/2022.computel-1.13.mp4