@inproceedings{yang-etal-2025-nushurescue,
title = {{N}{\"u}shu{R}escue: Reviving the Endangered N{\"u}shu Language with {AI}},
author = "Yang, Ivory and
Ma, Weicheng and
Vosoughi, Soroush",
editor = "Rambow, Owen and
Wanner, Leo and
Apidianaki, Marianna and
Al-Khalifa, Hend and
Eugenio, Barbara Di and
Schockaert, Steven",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Computational Linguistics",
month = jan,
year = "2025",
address = "Abu Dhabi, UAE",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2025.coling-main.468/",
pages = "7020--7034",
abstract = {The preservation and revitalization of endangered and extinct languages is a meaningful endeavor, conserving cultural heritage while enriching fields like linguistics and anthropology. However, these languages are typically low-resource, making their reconstruction labor-intensive and costly. This challenge is exemplified by N{\"u}shu, a rare script historically used by Yao women in China for self-expression within a patriarchal society. To address this challenge, we introduce N{\"u}shuRescue, an AI-driven framework designed to train large language models (LLMs) on endangered languages with minimal data. N{\"u}shuRescue automates evaluation and expands target corpora to accelerate linguistic revitalization. As a foundational component, we developed NCGold, a 500-sentence N{\"u}shu-Chinese parallel corpus, the first publicly available dataset of its kind. Leveraging GPT-4-Turbo, with no prior exposure to N{\"u}shu and only 35 short examples from NCGold, N{\"u}shuRescue achieved 48.69{\%} translation accuracy on 50 withheld sentences and generated NCSilver, a set of 98 newly translated modern Chinese sentences of varying lengths. In addition, we developed FastText-based and Seq2Seq models to further support research on N{\"u}shu. N{\"u}shuRescue provides a versatile and scalable tool for the revitalization of endangered languages, minimizing the need for extensive human input. All datasets and code have been made publicly available at https://github.com/ivoryayang/NushuRescue.}
}
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<abstract>The preservation and revitalization of endangered and extinct languages is a meaningful endeavor, conserving cultural heritage while enriching fields like linguistics and anthropology. However, these languages are typically low-resource, making their reconstruction labor-intensive and costly. This challenge is exemplified by Nüshu, a rare script historically used by Yao women in China for self-expression within a patriarchal society. To address this challenge, we introduce NüshuRescue, an AI-driven framework designed to train large language models (LLMs) on endangered languages with minimal data. NüshuRescue automates evaluation and expands target corpora to accelerate linguistic revitalization. As a foundational component, we developed NCGold, a 500-sentence Nüshu-Chinese parallel corpus, the first publicly available dataset of its kind. Leveraging GPT-4-Turbo, with no prior exposure to Nüshu and only 35 short examples from NCGold, NüshuRescue achieved 48.69% translation accuracy on 50 withheld sentences and generated NCSilver, a set of 98 newly translated modern Chinese sentences of varying lengths. In addition, we developed FastText-based and Seq2Seq models to further support research on Nüshu. NüshuRescue provides a versatile and scalable tool for the revitalization of endangered languages, minimizing the need for extensive human input. All datasets and code have been made publicly available at https://github.com/ivoryayang/NushuRescue.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T NüshuRescue: Reviving the Endangered Nüshu Language with AI
%A Yang, Ivory
%A Ma, Weicheng
%A Vosoughi, Soroush
%Y Rambow, Owen
%Y Wanner, Leo
%Y Apidianaki, Marianna
%Y Al-Khalifa, Hend
%Y Eugenio, Barbara Di
%Y Schockaert, Steven
%S Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Computational Linguistics
%D 2025
%8 January
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Abu Dhabi, UAE
%F yang-etal-2025-nushurescue
%X The preservation and revitalization of endangered and extinct languages is a meaningful endeavor, conserving cultural heritage while enriching fields like linguistics and anthropology. However, these languages are typically low-resource, making their reconstruction labor-intensive and costly. This challenge is exemplified by Nüshu, a rare script historically used by Yao women in China for self-expression within a patriarchal society. To address this challenge, we introduce NüshuRescue, an AI-driven framework designed to train large language models (LLMs) on endangered languages with minimal data. NüshuRescue automates evaluation and expands target corpora to accelerate linguistic revitalization. As a foundational component, we developed NCGold, a 500-sentence Nüshu-Chinese parallel corpus, the first publicly available dataset of its kind. Leveraging GPT-4-Turbo, with no prior exposure to Nüshu and only 35 short examples from NCGold, NüshuRescue achieved 48.69% translation accuracy on 50 withheld sentences and generated NCSilver, a set of 98 newly translated modern Chinese sentences of varying lengths. In addition, we developed FastText-based and Seq2Seq models to further support research on Nüshu. NüshuRescue provides a versatile and scalable tool for the revitalization of endangered languages, minimizing the need for extensive human input. All datasets and code have been made publicly available at https://github.com/ivoryayang/NushuRescue.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2025.coling-main.468/
%P 7020-7034
Markdown (Informal)
[NüshuRescue: Reviving the Endangered Nüshu Language with AI](https://aclanthology.org/2025.coling-main.468/) (Yang et al., COLING 2025)
ACL