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Verbatim report of proceedings
Monday, 10 September 2018 - Strasbourg Revised edition

Language equality in the digital age (short presentation)
MPphoto
 

  Jill Evans, Rapporteur. – Mr President, there is a Welsh proverb: ‘A nation without a language is a nation without a heart’ – Cenedl heb iaith, cenedl heb galon. It reflects the centrality of the language to people’s identity and culture. In the same way, Europe’s linguistic diversity is an integral element of European identity, reflected in the motto Unity in diversity. The EU has 500 million citizens, 24 official languages, five co-official languages and three alphabets, but some 60 other languages are also part of the EU’s heritage, including sign languages, which are included in my report.

The EU has played an important role in supporting linguistic diversity and encouraging the promotion and protection of minority and lesser—spoken languages. This is in Article 22 of the Charter for Fundamental Rights. The Committee on Culture and Education agreed that we must ensure comprehensive EU—level legal protection for regional and minority languages, recognising the collective rights of national and linguistic minorities in the digital world. Because when we go online, we find a world where many languages are at risk of extinction. New technologies like Siri and Alexa are changing the way we live our lives, but are available in just a few languages. As this technology gets more widely used, the speakers of other languages are being left behind.

To help address this problem my report calls on the Commission to bring forward a range of measures, including: allocating the specific area of multilingualism and language technology to the portfolio of one Commissioner; establishing a large—scale, long—term funding programme for research and development and innovation, as well as establishing a European language technology platform, and extending the digital language diversity project; supporting education policies to ensure that the next generation of Europeans will lead the way in this field, as well as encouraging companies to take the business opportunities that this would present.

Our multilingualism is a great asset, an opportunity, and at the same time is one of the EU’s greatest challenges. The impetus from my report was a STOA study entitled ‘Language equality in the digital age – Towards a human language project’ which showed the social and economic consequences of language barriers. In fact, we see the technology gap widening between the large, well—resourced languages and others, even some official languages.

The network of experts on language technologies –META—NET– warns that at least 21 European languages are in danger of extinction in the digital world. So we must act, and urgently. This is a huge opportunity for the EU to demonstrate a real commitment to language equality which will benefit all its citizens, to share ideas and good practice, and I am proud that researchers in Wales, such as in Canolfan Bedwyr at Bangor University, are leading the way.

Finally, can I thank the shadow rapporteurs for their enthusiastic cooperation, my assistant, Cai Elis, for his excellent work on this report, as well as our Group staff, colleagues in the Committee on Industry, Trade and Research, the committee secretariat and all the experts who advised me during the process. It is clear this is an issue of huge interest.

 
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