TDLE 2024: Topics of Interest

Topics of Interest

The workshop intends to bring together developers, creators, vendors, distributors, brokers, users, evaluators and researchers of written, oral/spoken, signed and/or multimodal Language Resources and Technologies (LRTs) in any (combination of) languages.
Recognising that the sustainability of LRTs is key to enabling multilingualism and Digital Language Equality (DLE) in the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI), topics of particular interest for the workshop on which we invite original contributions covering any (combination of) languages include, but are not limited to, the following:

• research on the factors affecting DLE and the sustainability of LRTs;
• best practices, case studies and validated guidelines related to the design, implementation and improvement of sustainability of written, oral/spoken, signed and/or multimodal LRTs (including large language models, LLMs), particularly in support of DLE;
• how multilingual LLM technology can support DLE;
• retrospectively assessing the sustainability of legacy LRTs, and future-proofing new LRTs in the interest of DLE;
• analysing the costs and benefits of foregrounding sustainability for LRTs;
• the role of metadata, accompanying documentation and licenses in showing and improving the sustainability of LRTs;
• sustainability, fairness and accessibility (e.g. for users with physical or cognitive disabilities, limited computing resources and connectivity) of platforms and infrastructures hosting, distributing and sharing LRTs in the interest of DLE;
• how current data and computing access inequality is affecting DLE (in particular regarding LLMs);
• ecological sustainability and environmental fairness of developing and deploying state-of-the-art LRTs, e.g. LLMs with regard to energy consumption, global warming and climate change;
• developing data and parameter efficient methods to train or adapt language models to new languages;
• how to evaluate, measure, compare and improve the sustainability of LRTs;
• establishing benchmarks and protocols to ensure the sustainability of LRTs;
• how to avoid the potential dangers of developing and using unfair and unsustainable LRTs, e.g. for malicious, ill-intentioned or harmful purposes;
• ethical, legal, cultural and/or socio-economic implications of (ignoring) fairness and sustainability of LRTs;
• developing and implementing forward-looking policies to promote fairness and long-term sustainability of LRTs to achieve DLE;
• education and training needs and experiences in relation to promoting fairness and sustainability of LRTs and ways to raise broad awareness of DLE and related topics, e.g. among the general public, policy- and decision-makers.