Elhuyar has been present in the European Parliament presenting his work at the artificial intelligence centre Orai. Elhuyar's general coordinator, Jon Abril Olaetxea, and Igor Leturia Azkarate, responsible for Orai Speech Technologies, attended 10:00 at the European Parliament's Strasbourg headquarters in the Intergroup on Traditional Minorities, National Communities and Languages.

They have been invited by François Alfonsi, a Corso Member of the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance.

Elhuyar has made available to other minority languages in Europe its experience and experience. She has announced her work on language technologies and artificial intelligence (automatic translator Elia, Aditu speech recognizer and TTS speech synthesis service, among others).

Elhuyar has a trajectory of more than 20 years in these fields, and has long been aware of the importance of this for the development of our language. That's the raison d'être and the goal of Orai, Elhuyar's artificial intelligence center, created a year and a half ago. Digitalisation facilitates the accessibility and dissemination of Euskera, as well as of any other language. “We live in a digital society and the future of a language without a strong digital presence will be very complicated. Digitisation is an element that must be taken into account in the processes of revitalising languages. The largest languages in Europe, such as French, Spanish or German, are also aware of this, as the threat of English can lead to the loss of many functions and users for these languages. This threat is even more evident to minority languages,” says Jon Abril Olaetxea, general coordinator of Elhuyar.

In a globalised world where the tendency to homogenize cultures and languages is increasing, April has stressed that the active presence on the Internet of languages such as the Basque language contributes to the construction of another model of society, “more diverse and thought for people”: “The digitisation of minority languages is not only related to communication and access to information, but also affects future cultural diversity, economic growth and economic growth. In this sense, April has claimed that “Euskera must be on our mobile phones, it must serve us to communicate both verbally and in writing with the phone and any other device”. It adds that “the right to use minority languages in any area of digital platforms, television offerings, Internet content and workplaces or self-employed cars on the market must be guaranteed. And minority languages need help to develop these technologies. On the one hand, to develop our own technologies, to act outside the logics of the big multinationals, but also to act according to our own cultural and linguistic content and references”. April explains that these measures must be legal and economic. In this sense, following the debate in recent months on the official status of Euskera, Catalan and Galician in the European institutions, the general coordinator of Elhuyar stated that “this official status is fundamental”.

For his part, Igor Leturia Azkarate, head of Orai Speech Technologies, spoke about the work on language and speech technologies and artificial intelligence, and stressed that “the situation of the Basque Country is better than that of many other minority languages because research and development, with language as its axis, has begun for more than two decades. Universities, research centres, companies, technology centres… we have been working for years in the field of language technologies”. Leturia has underlined the importance of putting language at the centre of any digital strategy.

It also stressed the need for cooperation between minority language actors. “If we act together, we will achieve it more easily. We have embarked on a road with the Linguatec IA project, financed by European funds from the Interreg-Poctefa programme. Starting from Euskera, we work for Catalan, Aragonese and Occitan, among others. We must extend this model and make the accumulated knowledge available to other European languages,” adds Leturia. In the opinion of the members of Elhuyar and Orai, Europe should set up a specific subsidy line for the development of such projects.