digilinguo

At a hospital emergency ward, at a school parents' evening or during a police check in the middle of the night, communication can be difficult or even impossible if the parties involved do not speak a common language. Family members, friends or uninvolved work colleagues often facilitate communication when interpreters are not available quickly enough.

Digilinguo supports public institutions such as hospitals, courts, schools or police units in overcoming language barriers, thereby relieving the burden on everyone involved. To this end, Digilinguo examines the use of new digital language and translation tools in practice. It provides training and continuing education materials for interpreting professionals and creates a platform for critical exchanges among the various stakeholders. The close collaboration between the fields of research, practice and education across all areas makes it possible to collaboratively identify problems and find solutions that are applicable and efficient in the real world.

Project management

digilinguo is being funded by the Digitalization Initiative of the Zurich Higher Education Institutions (DIZH) in the period from 2025 to 2029 and is a collaboration between the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) and the University of Zurich (UZH). Prof. Alice Delorme Benites from the ZHAW's IMK Institute of Multilingual Communication is leading the project. The ZHAW is receiving support in performing its operational work from the UZH's Institute for Computational Linguistics and Language Technology.

Organisation

digilinguo is co-directed by the following researchers:

Alice Delorme Benites, Institute of Multilingual Communication ZHAW
Sarah Ebling, Department of Computational Linguistics and Language Technology UZH

Laura Subirats Kärkkäinen, who leads project administration, is tasked with the operational support of our co-leads.

The three project pillars (meetups, Science2Practice, test track) are led and coordinated by acedemics from both UZH and the ZHAW:

Anne Catherine Gieshoff, Lead test track
Annette Rios, Lead Science2Practice
Caroline Lehr, Lead meetups

Partners

INTERPRET

digilinguo

Project management

Organisation

Partners

INTERPRET

University of Teacher Education in Special Needs (HfH)

Caritas

Bhaasha

dolmX

interunido

Swiss Red Cross

isa Fachstelle Migration

SAH Schaffhausen

HEKS Linguadukt (Basel and Aarau)

Appartenances

Fachgruppe Sprachdienstleistungen of the Obergericht des Kantons Zürich

Talking Pictures

Sponsors

Wordscope