Session
Motorola
Delaney Jackson, Motorola, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group
Speaker 1: Delaney Gomez-Jackson, Private sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 2: Gianluca Diana, Private sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 3: Santiago Mendez Galvis,
Speaker 4: Juliana Rebelatto, Private sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
Targets: 9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
Theater
We plan to present to the audience for 40 minutes leaving an additional 20 minutes available for an interactive question and answer session with the audience. This amount of time will allow us to present our Digital Inclusion initiative in detail so the audience can learn about the scope of the project, as well as engage more with the content during the interactive part of the workshop. The theater room layout will especially foster the format of having a presentation followed by a Q&A session, as the audience will be able to easily view the accompanying slideshow presentation.
In early 2020, Motorola’s Globalization engineering team identified a gap in the representation of minority and indigenous languages in the User Interface (UI) of smartphones. Motorola became the first phone manufacturer to fully support Nheengatu and Kaingang in the UI of our smartphones in 2021. Since our first project centered in South America, we have added unique support for endangered languages from North America (Cherokee), Oceania(Māori), South Asia (Kuvi and Kangri), and Europe, with Ladin as our first autochthonous language from Italy. Motorola’s partnership with UNESCO is in line with Lenovo Foundation’s mission to digitize and revitalize endangered languages over a decade (2022 to 2032). Through this initiative, Motorola aims to inspire more action towards the revitalization of indigenous languages as well as close the gap in digitally inclusive technology, which is in alignment with the overarching mission to deliver “Smarter Technology for All.”Motorola’s Digital Inclusion initiative has, thus far, provided over one million open-sourced words from endangered minority and indigenous languages available for use by scholars and others in the industry equally committed to the digitization and revitalization of indigenous languages. Over time, our goal is to motivate continued research and technology usage (for example machine translation, language dictionaries, keyboards etc.) to positively impact the minority and indigenous communities collaborating on this initiative. Motorola closely collaborates with scholars and representatives of these indigenous communities to ensure that the communities lead decision-making throughout the duration of the project. The impact of this initiative is to (a) make smartphone technology more inclusive, (b) highlight the importance of cultural and linguistic diversity, and (c) open-source the language data to inspire others to join the language revitalization cause.
1. The 60 minutes requested for our session would involve 40 minutes of presentation time, during which we will discuss the details of our Digital Inclusion Initiative as presented in our UNESCO white paper, with 20 minutes allotted for questions from the audience. 2. Questions from the audience will be welcomed from both in-person and online participants. Participants both in-person and online will be given the opportunity to ask questions which will be selected by our workshop moderator.3. Google Slides will be used to provide visual explanations during the presentation.
Report
Report on IGF 2025 Day 0 Event #259 Motorola’s Digital Inclusion Initiative
Lenovo Foundation is Lenovo’s charitable and philanthropic arm which has a global strategy of empowering under-represented populations with access to technology and STEM education. Lenovo Foundation supports various Digital Inclusion initiatives including Motorola’s Digital Inclusion of Endangered Indigenous Languages initiative. In addition to supporting Digital Inclusion initiatives, Lenovo is committed to responsible AI development and contributing to the global policy landscape.
Motorola and Lenovo Foundation’s Digital Inclusion of Endangered Indigenous Languages initiative has the main goal of serving communities through raising awareness of endangered Indigenous languages as well as addressing the needs of Indigenous communities through easier access to technology. Approximately 40% of the 6,700 languages currently spoken are in danger of becoming extinct; UNESCO estimates that one Indigenous language is lost every two weeks, meaning that by the end of the century, almost 3,000 languages will no longer be in use. This initiative aims to bring action toward the preservation and revitalization of such endangered languages, thereby empowering future generations of Indigenous communities to use technology in their native language.
In 2020, Motorola discovered a gap in the representation of Indigenous languages on smartphones. Taking the first step to address this issue, we launched the first User Interface in Kaingang and Nheengatu, two Indigenous languages spoken in South America. We joined UNESCO in the kick-off of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages from 2022 through 2032 and have since collaborated with dedicated teams across various Indigenous and minority communities to digitize the following languages: Cherokee, Kangri, Kuvi, Māori, Ladin, and Zapotec.
Our language selection criteria are based on four main pillars: (1) UNESCO language endangerment status, (2) Digital Inclusion status, (3) community input and feeling, and (4) the availability of subject matter experts (SMEs) for a language. The UNESCO language endangerment status, effected by factors such as intergenerational transfer, has five levels (excluding a non-endangered level): vulnerable, definitely endangered, severely endangered, critically endangered, and extinct. A language’s digital inclusion status – whether it has received support from UNICODE or Gboard, for example – is also considered. Community input and feeling toward the digitization of their language is paramount to the success of this initiative, as communities have different needs for the process of digitizing their language. Finally, the availability of SMEs, who often act as the ‘bridge’ which connects us to the community, is crucial in guiding the project in the direction of the community’s needs.
In this session, we discussed two case studies of the Digital Inclusion initiative: (1) the creation of a Zapotec keyboard and (2) the localization of the User Interface (UI) of a smartphone into Ladin. Zapotec is a ‘definitely endangered’ language spoken by approximately 490,000 people in Oaxaca, Mexico. We collaborated with Ambrocio Gutierrez Lorenzo, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Colorado-Boulder, who held workshops in five Valley Zapotec communities which involved discussions of the language’s sound and writing systems, keyboard layout creation, and keyboard testing. The guiding principle throughout the workshops was community acceptance and leadership; it was crucial that the community made decisions about their keyboard while our team could provide technical advice when needed. Community feedback regarding this initiative was positive, with Zapotec speakers reporting that the keyboard was both important for the revitalization of their language, as well as practical for daily use.
Ladin, a language spoken by about 32,000 people in the Dolomite region of Italy, is categorized as ‘definitely endangered.’ While the language is autochthonous to Italy, it does not have an associated kinstate supporting the language, highlighting the importance of the promotion of a minority language. Our team collaborated with Paul Videsott, Professor of Romance Philology at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, and a team of Ladin translators to localize over 200,000 words that now appear in the UI of our smartphones when a user selects Ladin as the device language. To make important decisions regarding the digitization of Ladin, such as the creation of new terminologies or which dialect to use, Professor Videsott had several meetings among translators and representatives across different Ladin cultural institutes. Professor Videsott believes that this initiative “Definitively will help Ladin and other minority languages to be more visible… mobile phones are like the pencil of the 21st century, and having minority languages, and having Ladin in [them], has the same importance of having a language in a book… in the centuries before.”
As leaders of technology, Motorola and Lenovo Foundation recognize our responsibility to positively influence society through environmental and social governance. Consequently, we are committed to the International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022 through 2032) as proclaimed by UNESCO and look toward community feedback to improve our process. Our digitization process is shared with the public so other companies and institutions can join language preservation and revitalization efforts. In addition to this, we have open-sourced over one million translated words in various Indigenous and minority languages that are available to be downloaded by educators, researchers, and industry experts aiming to promote the revitalization of endangered Indigenous languages. With the core tenants of passionate employee experts, a commitment to respect for diverse and underrepresented cultures, commitment to quality through collaboration of scholars and institutions, and a vision for impact broader than Motorola devices, the Digital Inclusion of Indigenous Languages initiative will continue.
