Watch Your Language

The Fulani people of West Africa are the world’s largest nomadic group – but without an alphabet, their language, Pulaar, was doomed to vanish. Enter the Barry brothers and Microsoft. Together, they built a digital alphabet for Pulaar to protect the community’s heritage. The alphabet was officially recognised by the government and made accessible on more than 1bn computers, showing how tech giants can help communities adapt to a changing world.

The Okinawa prefecture in Japan has its own language, distinct from Japanese. But the number of speakers of Okinawan is declining year by year. To revitalise the language, newspaper company Okinawa Times reserved advertising space on its pages that local businesses could use for free…as long as the ad was in Okinawan. Winning the Print & Publishing Grand Prix at Spikes Asia 2021, the work shows how to use brand power to incentivise other businesses to work with you for the common good.

Google Maps helps you find places – but it often can’t pronounce the names of these places. Telco Vodafone partnered with Google Maps to fix Maori pronunciation blunders. It asked locals to drop a pin on every mispronounced place so Google could fix it – and drove engagement by contacting regional media in the most mispronounced locations. Within two weeks, positive sentiment for Vodafone hit 99.8%, showcasing the creative power of crowdsourcing.

Around 90% of D/deaf kids are born to hearing parents – and the majority of those parents don’t speak sign language. To bridge the gap between D/deaf and hearing, the American Society for Deaf Children created fingerspelling.xyz, a web-based app that provides American sign language (ASL) lessons with live feedback using AI and machine learning. With a $0 media budget, the app taught over 150,000 ASL letters within the first 10 days, showing the results of approaching education in a playful way.

Google Translate doesn’t offer Faroese. To fix this, Visit Faroe Islands and Atlantic Airways built a copy of Google Translate – except translations were provided live by volunteers. More than 40% of the Faroese population participated in the initiative, which reached 1.4 billion people worldwide, and the number of visitors to the Faroe Islands grew by 29%. Like ‘Say it Tika’, it shows how to rally local communities to make a change.