Working Group Report: Global Impact

Agenda
• Situation today
• Where we want to be in 2024
• How to get there

Situation today
• What we do is
o Not widely known
o Financially not viable / sustainable
o Not taken up
o Un-connected (country/region/continent/global)
• People do not know what is available in their language (people = end-users OR publishers OR politicians OR…)
• We are working in the background (it’s not always easily visible) as it is a service to others.
• We are the enablers but have no enabled / productized / pushed into relevant space
• What we do is not always relevant

Where we want to be in 2024
• Connected globally
o Know what is going on, where to get help, where to promote our work
• Viable and sustainable
• Relevant, e.g.
o School and education
o Health
o Fun
• Reference point
o Guidelines
o Tools
o Best practice
• Understand “market” requirements; how can what we do contribute to
o Improve living standards
o Create employment opportunities
o Increase people’s income
o Keep people out of jail
o Ensure people’s survival
• Have a Marketing and a PR department
• Have a team creating products
• Be multi: -modal, -domain, and mobile

How to get there
• Work with
o Children
• And their teachers
o Free licenses for schools
o Public service (local, state, intra-state)
• Identify 3 (or more?) core application areas where local language access has made a real difference AND were it would make a significant difference, e.g.
o Computerize patient’s records in your language
o A really successful game
o Weather, market and sowing information for farmers
• Implement proper market research
• Create a global nonprofit network and events
• Work with organizations on the ground who would like to use the results of our work
• Look at Language Technologies not as something that has a value per se but as a service or enabler
• Highlight impact of existing work