Tencent partners with UNESCO to preserve endangered languages

Tencent Cloud, the cloud computing arm of tech giant Tencent Holdings, is partnering with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization to preserve endangered languages through digital means, the company said on Wednesday.

The tech giant will team up with Talkmate, a language learning app, under the organization's initiative dubbed "World Atlas of Languages", through which the parties pledged to uphold multilingualism using artificial intelligence and cloud computing technologies.

The company promised to share its expertise in voice recognition to allow language learners to correct their pronunciation and protect linguistic, cultural and documentary heritage, said Qiu Yuepeng, president of Tencent Cloud.

It would also connect hardware makers and facilitate their work with technologies they can apply to creating a variety of multilanguage scenarios such as parenting and building an internet-connected home, he added.

About half the world's 7,000 languages spoken today are in danger of disappearing, and in cyberspace 70 percent of the content is in English and Chinese, threatening the legitimacy and even rights of underrepresented populations, said Marielza Oliveira, director and representative of UNESCO in China.

"With its incredible outreach capacity, Tencent Cloud will help expand the campaign globally," Oliveria said.

The collaboration will provide a wide range of technical facilities to all stakeholders to access and share their own data on linguistic diversity, information on good practices, existing language teaching and learning solutions, and user-generated content, said Wen Ronghui, CEO of Talkmate.

The partnership would also help Tencent broaden its audience base by promoting popular products beyond its home turf, from gaming titles to social networking platforms, according to Wang Dafeng, a product manager at Tencent Cloud.