Language Technologies for All 2025

About the conference:

The 2nd International Conference on Language Technologies for All (LT4All 2025) has as its theme Advancing Humanism through Language Technologies and as its aim furthering the agenda of language technologies with a focus on community empowerment. It will try to explore the relationships among technologies, languages, and their related communities from scientific, technical, cultural, linguistic, economic, political, and ethical perspectives. Its goal is to harness technology not only to advance itself but also to support and enhance individuals’ capabilities.

LT4All 2025 is organized by ELRA and SIGUL, the ELRA/ISCA Special Interest Group on Under-resourced Languages, in partnership with UNESCO. It will be held at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris from 24 to 26 February 2025 as part of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages (IDIL 2022-2032) and will celebrate the Silver Jubilee of International Mother Language Day. It will try to bring together scientific and technological solution providers and representatives of linguistic communities.

Session: “The Impact of Language Technology: Enhancing or Undermining Human Roles?”

Date:  2/25/2025

Time: 11:40am – 13:20pm (GMT+1) / 5:40-7:20am EST

Presentation: The Role of Human Moderators in Low-Resource Languages: Kiswahili as a Case Study

Speaker: CDT’s Mona Elswah

Description: Content moderators play a crucial role in safeguarding the information environment and ensuring a fair online experience. However, they often work under poor conditions with inadequate training, leading to moderation errors. This is particularly evident in the Majority World, especially in low-resource languages like Kiswahili, spoken by over 100 million people in East Africa. This presentation explores the challenges faced by human moderators in Kiswahili content moderation across platforms in Kenya and Tanzania. Findings highlight the limitations of language technology and underscore the essential need for human expertise to ensure accurate and culturally relevant content moderation.