I strategic session “Information Technologies and Languages of the Peoples of Russia”

The Federal State Budgetary Institution “House of the Peoples of Russia” held the I strategic session “Information Technologies and Languages of the Peoples of Russia” with the support of the Federal Agency for Ethnic Affaires on May 13 – 14, 2024, at Yandex headquarters, Moscow.

The strategic session included discussion of the topical issues of the national policy regarding the support of the native languages of the peoples of Russia in cyberspace, presentation of digital solutions of scientific organizations, business, language activists to ensure the full functioning of languages in the digital world.

At the plenary session “Language and Digit: Synergy of State, Society and Business” Deputy Head of the Federal Agency for Ethnic Affairs Stanislav Bedkin noted that the Russian Federation is one of the most active participants in the process of digitalization of languages, that is reflected in the state language policy. The state aims to create equal conditions for digital development for all languages of the peoples of Russia. The plenary session was marked by the representatives of the socially responsible business, regional and federal authorities, academic community.

The first day of the strategic session was devoted to the subject: “Digital Solutions for Supporting the Languages of the Peoples of Russia: Basic Language Technologies”. Experts from different regions of Russia presented their digital developments: mobile applications, automatic translation systems for video content and search engines in native languages. The discussion was conducted by Timur Tsybikov, Head of the Department of State Policy in the Sphere of Interethnic Relations of the Federal Agency for Ethnic Affaires, and Vasily Kharitonov, Research Fellow at the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The second day consisted of the master class session by leading specialists in the field of information technology. Alexander Antonov spoke about the creation of the Translator. Andrey Mikheev spoke about the development and implementation of handwriting recognition technologies. The experience of the “Archive Search” service was presented. Session expert Irina Vinogradova spoke about the national corpus of the Russian language.  Aigiz Kunafin, a programmer from Ufa, presented his project “Bashkir Smart Speaker”.

Meeting of the working group under the Federal Agency for Ethnic Affaires on the creation of corpora of languages of the peoples of the Russian Federation for inclusion in the Yandex Translator service was held. Currently, the working group includes representatives of 18 subjects of the Russian Federation, who have selected 24 languages for work: Abaza, Avar, Adyghe, Buriat, Dargwa, Ingush, Kabardian, Karachay-Balkar, Kalmyk, Komi, Crimean Tatar, Kumyk, Lak, Lezgian, Mansi, Moksha, Nenets, Nogai, Ossetic, Tabasaran, Tuvinian, Khanty, Chechen, Erzya.