M alta National Language Technology Platform: A vision for enhancing M alta’s official languages using Machine Translation (2021)

Abstract: In this paper we introduce a vision towards establishing the Malta National Language Technology Platform; an ongoing effort that aims to provide a basis for enhancing Malta’s official languages, namely Maltese and English, using Machine Translation. This will contribute towards the current niche of Language Technology support for the Maltese low-resource language, across multiple computational linguistics fields, such as speech processing, machine translation, text analysis, and multi-modal resources. The end goals are to remove language barriers, increase accessibility, foster cross-border services, and most importantly to facilitate the preservation of the Maltese language.

## introduction work in computational linguistics and natural language processing (nlp) has been gaining a lot of traction in recent years. particularly with the advance of the world wide web, this field now has access to thousands of languages. whilst initially the field focused on a smaller number of these languages, namely high-resourced languages such as english, chinese, and german, it is becoming increasingly evident that substantial effort needs to be invested in low-resource languages, particularly those at risk of becoming extinct. here, the web could act either as a catalyst to the disappearance of such languages, especially if the language is spoken by minorities, or it could help preserve such languages if the relevant resources, including nlp tools, are made available. in the research conducted by rosner and joachimsen, the authors conclude that the level of technological support for maltese, compared to that for other european languages, is extremely low, giving rise to the threat of "digital extinction" for the language @xcite . in this context, "digital extinction" refers to the possibility that maltese, while possibly maintaining its status as a national tongue with institutional support and recognition, is nevertheless virtually absent from digital media. the current state of language technology (lt) support for the maltese language is weak or provides no support with respect to speech processing, machine translation (mt), text analysis and speech and text resources. considering this current state of maltese lt support, the english language has become the default language of choice across most technological devices in malta, simply because there are more language resources and tools available and they are easier to use. taking this in consideration, prominence should also be directed towards maltese language resources and tools, such as lexicons, corpora, lexical resources, language models and natural language processing tools, that can be used by any artificial intelligence (ai) technology initiative. investment in language technologies, tools and resources, especially those focused on lowresourced languages such as maltese, provides the opportunity to address the complex issue of multilingualism in europe and thus caters for citizens' needs to communicate across the language borders of the european common market. the developed maltese language tools and resources can also feed into the european language grid @xcite ; the primary cloud-based platform for lt in europe. the aim of this platform is to boost the multilingual digital single market towards a prosperous european lt community, which shall create jobs, new markets and new opportunities. in a concrete effort to increase resources in the maltese language and facilitating the preservation of the maltese language, this paper presents a vision towards the development of a national language technology platform (nltp) for malta. this work is part of a cef telecom -automated translation (eu) project which has started in april 2021, whereby latvia, estonia, croatia, iceland, and malta shall be developing a nltp for each country for language tools and resources foot_0 . with respect to malta, the maltese adaptation of the nltp will be implemented through a collaboration between the malta information technology agency (mita); the technology partner responsible for malta's nltp development, the office of the state advocate (osa); a pilot partner with a specific focus on the legal domain, and the university of malta (um); a research partner who shall be working on neural approaches towards multimodal machine translation (mmmt). moreover, the malta nltp aligns with malta's strategy and vision for artificial intelligence @xcite where the country is investing in the development of maltese language tools and resources. ## multilingualism challenges multilingualism is considered to be a cornerstone value within europe, where the language diversity is embraced as a basis to good administration @xcite . this linguistic diversity however creates many challenges stemming from language insularity, and impacts a number of domains, including public administrations, public e-services, and the cohesion of the european union digital single market (dsm). in malta, both maltese and english are official languages, with maltese -a language of semitic origin written in the latin script-being the national language. maltese, an official language of the european union, is spoken by 97.25% of the population (around 500,000 people) 2 . the public administration may use any of these languages for official purposes. therefore, more prominence and importance need be given to the digital aspect of maltese. given that malta is highly multilingual, the following are the main language challenges being faced, especially when the maltese language is used for communication purposes: the national "novel coronavirus" web page 3 shows an example of the country's multilingualism needs and challenges, where all information about covid-19 has been translated to english, whereas other general information has been translated in over 20 languages. the following are some statistics supporting the need for such translations: top 10 eu nationals employed between 2002-2018 @xcite and top 10 third country nationals employed between 2002-2018 @xcite . ## related work as a low-resource language, language technologies for maltese are still lacking when compared to other languages, although there have indeed been developments in the domain in recent years. mt technology, especially mmmt technology, is still very limited. ## envisaged benefits the following are the main benefits of malta's nltp: ## conclusions and future work malta's nltp shall act as a central repository for maltese language tools and resources, primarily in the context of automated translation, and act as a one-stop-shop for its stakeholders. moreover, it shall continuously support the curation of any maltese language tools and resources for multiple domains, thus ensuring the presence of the currently low-resourced maltese language in digital environments and countering the threat of "digital extinction" of the language. this project is anticipated to leave both a social and economic impact to the maltese society and economy which benefits the citizens, the public administration, private entities, and academic institutions.