The online publication Pensem, invited experts to write a series of articles with the topic “Catalan, in the digital world.” I was fortunate enough to be asked also and I have written an article concerning the importance of free software and the efforts of the open source community specifically within the field of language technologies. Here is an English translation of it, I apologize ahead of time for the possible mistakes.

Catalan is one of the languages in Europe which feels the threat of the digital divide due to the rapid pace of innovation in language technologies. Luckily the local government Generalitat is very conscious on the subject and has been supporting various initiatives to ensure that Catalan language is represented both in the innovation efforts and products in the market.

As a part of the awareness efforts the Language Policy General Management (Direcció General Política Lingüística) of Generalitat have organized a stream, outlining the government led initiatives on giving support to open innovation on speech technologies. People, experts in their fields were invited to explain the recent developments and the projects they were involved in, and I was very fortunate to be a part of this group of experts.