For open multilingualism in Switzerland

Once again, we would like to thank the Forum Helveticum, the many participants and the exciting challenge providers most warmly for the successful hackathon on the topic of “Multilingualism 4.0”. Here is an extract from the Forum Helveticum’s summary:

Building on the reflections of the conference, the Forum Helveticum, in cooperation with Opendata.ch, welcomed around 40 people from a wide range of fields (computer scientists, linguists, designers, students, experts in mutual understanding, etc.) to the “Multilingualism 4.0” hackathon.

The participants were presented with 14 different challenges related to multilingualism, to which they developed innovative answers in multidisciplinary groups within 24 hours. At the final presentation on Saturday, 24 November 2018, ten projects were presented:

Together with a jury, the FH selected two projects that will receive further support for six months:

• “ExCHange”: a platform to promote direct, individual language exchange between young people.
• “The dictionary behind the mouse pointer”: a web extension for Firefox that enables the direct translation of a word between Romansh and German by moving the mouse pointer over a word.

Led by young people, these two projects use new technologies to promote mutual understanding in Switzerland and to make the national languages more accessible. The projects show great potential, and both the Forum Helveticum and Opendata.ch are pleased to be able to support their realisation.