Participatory Detection of Language Barriers towards Multilingual Sustainability(ies) in Africa

Autor: Gabriela Litre, Fabrice Hirsch, Patrick Caron, Alexander Andrason, Nathalie Bonnardel, Valerie Fointiat, Wilhelmina Onyothi Nekoto, Jade Abbott, Cristiana Dobre, Juliana Dalboni, Agnès Steuckardt, Giancarlo Luxardo, Hervé Bohbot
Přispěvatelé: Praxiling (Praxiling), Université Paul-Valéry - Montpellier 3 (UPVM)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Savoirs, ENvironnement et Sociétés (SENS), Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (Cirad)-Université Paul-Valéry - Montpellier 3 (UPVM)-Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), Center for Sustainable Development, Universidade de Brasilia [Brasília] (UnB), Acteurs, Ressources et Territoires dans le Développement (UMR ART-Dev), Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (Cirad)-Université Paul-Valéry - Montpellier 3 (UPVM)-Université de Perpignan Via Domitia (UPVD)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université de Montpellier (UM), Département Environnements et Sociétés (Cirad-ES), Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (Cirad), University of Stellenbosch Business School [Cape Town] (USB ), Laboratoire de Psychologie Sociale (LPS), Aix Marseille Université (AMU), Centre de Recherche en Psychologie de la Connaissance, du Langage et de l'Émotion (PsyCLÉ), Masakhane NLP, National Institute of Science and Technology (INCT), InCIAM
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2022
Předmět:
Zdroj: Sustainability
Sustainability, 2022, 14 (13), pp.8133. ⟨10.3390/su14138133⟩
ISSN: 2071-1050
Popis: International audience; After decades of political, economic, and scientific efforts, humanity has not gotten any closer to global sustainability. With less than a decade to reach the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) deadline of the 2030 Agenda, we show that global development agendas may be getting lost in translation, from their initial formulation to their final implementation. Sustainability science does not “speak” most of the 2000 languages from Africa, where the lack of indigenous terminology hinders global efforts such as the COVID-19 pandemic fight. Sociolinguistics, social psychology, cognitive ergonomics, geography, environmental sciences, and artificial intelligence (AI) are all relevant disciplinary fields to uncover the “foreign language effect” that hinders the implementation of the SDGs in Africa. We make the case for detecting and addressing language barriers towards multilingual sustainability in Africa by (1) exploring the ”foreign language effect” among African decision-makers and recognising their alternative social representations about sustainability; and (2) detecting Western language stereotypes about sustainability. We propose rethinking SDG-related scientific notions through participatory natural language processing (NLP) and the study of African social representations of sustainability, thus enabling a more inclusive and efficient approach to “sustainability(ies)”.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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