World Class Language Technology - Developing a Language Technology Strategy for Danish

3297 World Class Language Technology - The Process of developing a Language Technology Strategy for Danish Sabine Kirchmeier1, Philip Diderichsen2, Peter Juel Henrichsen3, Sanni Nimb4, Bolette S. Pedersen2 1Kirchmeier.dk, 2Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen, 3Danish Language Council 3Society for Danish Language and Literature, 1sabine@kirchmeier.dk, 2{cph, bspedersen}@hum.ku.dk, 3pjh@dsn.dk, 4sn@dsl.dk Abstract Although Denmark is one of the most digitized countries in Europe, no coordinated efforts have been made in recent years to support the Danish language regarding language technology and artificial intelligence. In March 2019, however, the Danish government adopted a new, ambitious strategy for LT and artificial intelligence. In this paper, we describe the process behind the development of the language- related parts of the strategy: A Danish Language Technology Committee was constituted and a comprehensive series of workshops were organised in which users, suppliers, developers, and researchers gave their valuable input based on their experiences. We describe how, based on this experience, the focus areas and recommendations for the LT strategy were established, and which steps are currently taken in order to put the strategy into practice. Keywords: Danish, language strategy, language policy 1. LT in Denmark Denmark is one of the most highly digitised societies in Europe. Several ambitious governmental IT strategies during the last ten years have led to the digitization of most processes in the public space. (Digital Strategy 2016-2020). All citizens have a digital secure login to public services and other services. All citizens and companies are obliged to regularly consult their government-provided virtual mailbox (the so-called e-Boks, cf. eboks.dk) while paper- based correspondence is no longer supported by the public sector. Schools are obliged to provide educational services online, and all public service providers must serve the citizens via online interfaces. Central recommendations have been made for the development of IT systems for state institutions. Here, the development of clear terminology and semantic descriptions of metadata and content play a crucial role. However, governmental initiatives for artificial intelligence and especially for LT have been rather scarce. In the META NET white papers (Pedersen et al. 2012), Danish was among the lowest ranked languages in Europe, and even much smaller language communities such as Iceland and Latvia have invested more in LT in recent years. This is mainly due to five factors: 1. The lack of freely available linguistic resources 2. The specific characteristics of the Danish language 3. The small size of Denmark, both as a language community and as a market (5.8 mill. citizens). 4. Lack of coordination in the development, distribution and use of Danish LT 5. Too modest investment in research and training in Danish LT in recent years. 2. Existing LT for Danish Danish differs markedly from English both in the way words and sentences are formed, and in the way, words are pronounced. Danish is exceptionally vowel rich (it has three times more vowels than English in IPA-counting). Danish pronunciation is characterized by a lot of phonetic reductions - which foreigners often experience as mumbling. This …

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