Towards Language Service Creation and Customization for Low-Resource Languages

Abstract

The most challenging issue with low-resource languages is the difficulty of obtaining enough language resources. In this paper, we propose a language service framework for low-resource languages that enables the automatic creation and customization of new resources from existing ones. To achieve this goal, we first introduce a service-oriented language infrastructure, the Language Grid; it realizes new language services by supporting the sharing and combining of language resources. We then show the applicability of the Language Grid to low-resource languages. Furthermore, we describe how we can now realize the automation and customization of language services. Finally, we illustrate our design concept by detailing a case study of automating and customizing bilingual dictionary induction for low-resource Turkic languages and Indonesian ethnic languages.

Keywords

• low-resource languages
• the language grid
• language resources
• language service infrastructure
• bilingual dictionary