Data Week 2026: Museum of Languages

The Turing Liaison team of The Jean Golding Institute present The Museum of Languages as part of Data Week 2026. This workshop explores how advances in machine translation and language learning are reshaping linguistic diversity, examining whether technology will lead to the loss, preservation, or revival of languages and what that means for culture and identity.

Date: June 3rd. 10:30am - 8:15pm

Part of Data Week June 1st - June 5th

Location: TBC

As machine translation makes communication effortless, we must ask what kind of understanding it delivers. Do ideas pass between us intact, or are they subtly thinned of voice, texture, and intent?

Will languages fade as translation becomes seamless, or proliferate into a world of local idiolects where machines mediate between ever more diverse forms of speech? Will we all speak one language, or each our own and how will we preserve the vast cultural treasury of those we already have?

The Museum of Languages imagines a living space for this uncertainty: a place to celebrate linguistic diversity, to question what may be lost or transformed, to help understand the future of language in the age of AI and to decide how we should respond to this challenge AI poses to languages, communication and meaning.

The workshop will have three elements:

  • A set of academic talks and panel discussions bringing together people with interests in machine learning, translation studies, linguistics, languages and museums.
  • Ten five minute ``Ignite-style" talks introducing ten different languages, each speaker will be asked to teach something distinctive or beautiful about the language they speak.
  • A key-note evening talk aimed at a broader public addressing a topic related to language diversity, language preservation or language learning. 

Indicative timetable:

10h30-11h00: Coffee!

11h00-11h10: Introduction to the Museum of Languages.

11h10-11h20: Two language introductions

11h20-12h00: Two talks about language translation.

12h00-13h00: Lunch!

13h00-13h10: Two language introductions.

13h10-13h50] Two talks about language diversity and preservation.

13h50-14h00: Two language introductions.

14h00-14h30: Coffee!

14h30-14h40: Two language introductions.

 14h40-15h20: Four short talks on ``What a Museum of Languages might be".

15h20-16h00: Panel discussion and wrap up.

16h00-19h00: Break!

19h00-19h10: Introduction.

19h10-19h20: Two language introductions.

19h20-20h00: Keynote talk.

20h00-20h10: Wrap up.