The giant leaps in language technology — and who’s left behind | Kalika Bali

Visit to get our entire library of TED Talks, transcripts, translations, personalized talk recommendations and more.

Thousands of languages thrive across the globe, yet modern speech technology — with all of its benefits — supports just over a hundred. Computational linguist Kalika Bali dreams of a day when technology acts as a bridge instead of a barrier, working passionately to build new and inclusive systems for the millions who speak low-resource languages. In this perspective-shifting talk, she outlines what happens when a language is omitted from the digital landscape — and what can be gained when communities keep pace with the future.

The TED Talks channel features the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design — plus science, business, global issues, the arts and more. You're welcome to link to or embed these videos, forward them to others and share these ideas with people you know.

Become a TED Member:
Follow TED on Twitter:
Like TED on Facebook:
Subscribe to our channel:

TED's videos may be used for non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons License, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives (or the CC BY – NC – ND 4.0 International) and in accordance with our TED Talks Usage Policy ( ). For more information on using TED for commercial purposes (e.g. employee learning, in a film or online course), please submit a Media Request at

23 Comments on The giant leaps in language technology — and who’s left behind | Kalika Bali

  1. We’re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads – TED
    Why facial recognition is so dangerous – second thought
    Reference Man – Full frontal with Samantha Bee

  2. You have just described how all new technologies have developed…. and then new tools come along to make it easier for others to use

  3. The sad irony is that this needs a more effective speaker to relay the information to regular wealthy Americans whom they hope will fund their projects. Every time a proper name is used or a place is referred to all the people im showing this to stop hearing. And it takes several moments for them to refocus based solely on the pressure they feel from me to understand. Please remake this with a stand in so stupid rich people can give you money to help.

  4. Why don’t you use public open platform Koo app indian twitter text to speech and increase NLP process increase as it has 23 indian languages and people daily kooing in the app

  5. This was great to learn about. I’m sceptical that many languages will survive into the future. Most of us will end up using English as the default language. It is sad because other languages have a lot of beauty and depth of feeling to offer. But just like we’ve moved away from our indeginious clothes and the whole world dresses the same, we’ll move away from languages too. Globalization and the internet will make us a homogenous global race.

  6. The top translated website on the world wide web is in 1030 languages. What is it? and how many languages is the 2nd placed site in?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*


Shares
Share This