The 10th episode of the podcast Digital Humanities – “The Beginnings of Computational Linguistics in Latvia” – has been released

The 10th episode of the podcast Digital Humanities — titled “The Beginnings of Computational Linguistics in Latvia” — has been released, featuring a conversation between Haralds Matulis and Dr. philol. Sarma Kļaviņa, Honorary Doctor of the Latvian Academy of Sciences.

In this episode, we look back at the early days of computational linguistics in Latvia. Sarma Kļaviņa shares how she began her studies in mathematical linguistics and how computers and computing entered the field of linguistics. The discussion touches on early machine translation, including binary translation and the interlingua paradigm, as well as the subsequent abandonment of machine translation efforts in the 1960s.

Sarma Kļaviņa’s main contributions to computational linguistics lie in linguistic statistics. Her diploma thesis focused on part-of-speech analysis, and later she compiled a frequency dictionary of Latvian journalistic texts.

The Digital Humanities podcast features conversations with leading researchers in the field, highlighting the latest developments in digital humanities research in Latvia. It is jointly organized by the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia (UL ILFA) and the National Library of Latvia.

To stay updated on digital humanities activities in Latvia, visit: www.digitalhumanities.lv

The podcast is produced with support from the project “Development of an Open and FAIR-Compliant Digital Humanities Ecosystem in Latvia” (No. VPP-IZM-DH-2022/1-0002), funded by the Latvian Council of Science.