Centering Community in Language Preservation - Building Speech Transcription for Khroskyabs

Automatic Speech Recognition can be a valuable tool for work in preserving Endangered Languages. The endangered language, Khroskyabs, is spoken by members of a village on the Tibetan Plateau who have been working with a linguist from their community on language preservation efforts. Machine learning and artificial intelligence tools can assist in language preservation. When preservation work is done by those outside the community, they must use technology with great care to maintain the respect that the community and language deserve. In this project, we demonstrate an example of how to prioritize an ethical framework to allow all linguists to accomplish language preservation goals.