Computational Language Documentation: Designing a Modular Annotation and Data Management Tool for Cross-cultural Applicability (2024)

Abstract: While developing computational language documentation tools, researchers must center the role of language communities in the process by carefully reflecting on and designing tools to support the varying needs and priorities of different language communities. This paper provides an example of how cross-cultural considerations discussed in literature about language documentation, data sovereignty, and community-led documentation projects can motivate the design of a computational language documentation tool by reflecting on our design process as we work towards developing an annotation and data management tool. We identify three recurring themes for cross-cultural consideration in the literature - Linguistic Sovereignty, Cultural Specificity, and Reciprocity - and present eight essential features for an annotation and data management tool that reflect these themes.

## introduction although rapid advances in language technology have been made in the last few decades, these advances have largely benefited speakers of global majority languages @xcite . in addition to population-based divides in technology availability, the delineation between well-resourced and low-resourced languages is connected to modern and historical socio-economic power dynamics, with resources for languages being reflective of the relative dominance of groups at the expense of others @xcite . in addition to the disproportionate availability of language technology for documented languages, advances in language technology have yet to significantly benefit those working on documenting languages, meaning that access to language technology is minimal, if not nonexistent, for languages that are currently undergoing the process of documentation. language technology is used as an inclusive term that describes both the technology that can help with the documentation and analysis process and the technology that the community can use to interact with, support, and teach their language. while language documentation processes vary vastly amongst different communities, the prototypical process normally involves a linguist and one or more members of a language community. the linguist works with the language community to gain a better understanding of the language by collecting data from the speakers. this data normally includes recordings from the speakers and annotations of the recordings, often as transcriptions in ipa or the language's orthography. throughout the process, there is typically a multitude of tools used to make the recordings, annotate the data regarding various features, analyze these annotations, and create a resource for the community. the process of transcribing audio is usually identified as one of the most time-consuming parts of the process, a problem referred to as the "transcription bottleneck." however, the next steps of analysis and resource development are equally, if not more, time-consuming. during analysis and resource development, the linguist often continues to consult with the language community to ensure correct analysis of the language and applicability of the developed resource. with the advent of computational linguistics, computational linguists are now often included in these last steps of annotation, analysis, and resource development. recent advances in language technology present an opportunity for expediting the process of language documentation and reducing the inequity of access to language technology, specifically through the development of language documentation tools. in order to maximize the utility of such a tool, it is essential to consider the varying cultural considerations that are present in the different contexts in which the tool might be used. we identify three integral steps in the process of creating a crossculturally applicable tool for language documen-tation: design, collaboration in communities, and feedback integration. while the rest of this paper focuses on the design step of the process, the effectiveness of an intentional design is mitigated if it is not followed by collaboration in communities and feedback integration. collaboration in communities should involve discussions with community members, activists, and language documentarians from various language communities about ethics, functionality, and risks of language technologies, and project outcomes. the subsequent step to collaboration is the integration of this feedback into the developing tool. we intend to further cover and demonstrate all three of these steps in future work, but this paper details our experiences with the first step: design. this paper provides a case study for designing a cross-culturally applicable tool by presenting how this process has been realized in the design phase of our own language documentation tool. our approach demonstrates how innovative research in language documentation, data sovereignty, and community-led technology development can be used as the foundation for the design of an annotation and data management tool. in section 2 we describe existing annotation and data management tools and how our tool compares. section 3 uses discussions of linguistic sovereignty, cultural specificity, and reciprocity to frame critical cross-cultural considerations that inspire the eight features that are described in section 4. in section 5 we conclude by discussing the benefits of integrating cross-cultural considerations into a project during the design process. ## related work the field of language documentation currently includes tools for assisting with transcription, annotation, and data management, as well as a series of recent attempts at developing more advanced versions of these tools. this section briefly describes the most popular tools, including the strengths and limitations of the various features. next, we describe novel approaches and further elaborate on the motivation for prioritizing cross-cultural considerations in the design process. the goal of this section is to provide a better understanding of what an annotation and data management tool encapsulates, before describing how cross-cultural considerations (section 3) motivate particular features in the design of such a tool (section 4). ## cross-cultural considerations recent work on computational language documentation has attempted to understand how documentary linguists, community members, and computational linguists can best support each other @xcite @xcite . collaborative work between these three groups has great potential to be mutually beneficial, as expertise from each group can guide the development of tools and documentation to maximize their impact. however, existing scholarship prioritizes the role of documentary linguists and computational linguists in the design of technology, which often results in either minimizing cross-cultural differences in a way that neglects recording information that is important to a community or produces a tool that works for a specific purpose, but is hard to extend to use in other communities. the challenge in designing an annotation and data management tool lies in the ability to support linguistic sovereignty, flexibly adapt to varying needs and ethics of language communities, and establish reciprocity as the basis for documentation. these themes are essential for a language documentation tool to integrate to the design, but their inclusion in the final project output is also dependent on project stakeholders conducting research in an ethical fashion that supports the outlined themes. ## tool features the three themes -linguistic sovereignty, cultural specificity, and reciprocity -identified in section 3 relate and intersect in various ways to motivate the 8 annotation and data management tool features described below. ## conclusion advances in computational language documentation have the potential to support community-led initiatives by designing tools with cross-cultural considerations as the foundation. while crosslinguistic extensibility often comes at the expense of cultural specificity, designing modularity and customization into the tool's features and the user interface empowers users to shape the tool to their specific cultural and linguistic context. existing research in language documentation, data sovereignty, and community-led research initiatives should inform those working on designing computational language documentation tools. following the intentional design of a cross-culturally applicable tool, the tool should be further developed in consultation with multiple language communities.