October 24, 2019
$13m boost for Te Hiku’s Māori translation tools
Kaitaia-based Te Hiku Media has secured a $13 million investment from the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment's Strategic Science Investment Fund for its Papa Reo technology initiative.
Papa Reo is a multilingual language platform that will develop natural language processing tools, starting with te reo Māori.
Applications built on the platform will allow people to use te reo Māori when engaging with their digital devices.
New Zealand English and Pacific languages will also be included to further support the growth of a multilingual Aotearoa.
Chief executive Peter-Lucas Jones says the new investment will allow Te Hiku to work with Wellington-based machine learning specialists Dragonfly Data Science to develop speech tools for te reo Māori, and also to bring in critical global expertise including Cambridge University’s Speech Group, Oxford University, and Mozilla.
Copyright © 2019, UMA Broadcasting Ltd: www.waateanews.com