The Nós Project promotes in Santiago the great Atlantic hub of Language Technologies and AI with Portugal
Researchers, companies and institutions from Galicia and Portugal come together to strengthen cooperation in language technologies for Galician-Portuguese within the framework of ALIA, which promotes a public infrastructure of AI resources for the languages of Spain
The University of Santiago de Compostela today hosted the 2nd Luso-Galician Meeting on Natural Language Processing (NLP). After the success of the first edition, held in Porto in June 2024, this second event has been consolidated as a key space to strengthen cooperation in language-oriented artificial intelligence between Galicia and Portugal.
A bond that Galicia reinforces in particular, as a natural meeting point between the Spanish-American and Lusophone worlds. As the scientific director of CiTIUS, Senén Barro, highlighted, “it is time to revitalize academic cooperation with Portugal in the field of artificial intelligence, transforming it into a strategic advantage that builds a true Galician-Portuguese area of research and innovation.”
“It is time to revitalize academic cooperation with Portugal in the field of artificial intelligence and turn it into a strategic advantage to create a true Galician-Portuguese space for research and innovation”
The meeting, led by the Proxecto Nós (a joint initiative of the Xunta de Galicia and the USC) and promoted within the framework of the ALIA project driven by the Government of Spain, brought together researchers, companies and other organizations involved in the development of language technologies for Galician-Portuguese, in an effort to position the Atlantic strip of the Iberian Peninsula as a pole of excellence in the application of artificial intelligence to languages, at a time when language technologies are becoming one of the main engines of AI and its social and economic applications. All this with the purpose of creating new commercial, business and research opportunities between Galicia and Portugal, not only for Portuguese and Galician, but also for all the languages of the territory: Spanish, Basque and Catalan.
The objectives of the meeting focused on creating a dynamic space to present research, projects and products developed in this field, as well as on promoting stable networks between research groups, technology centers and companies. The event also served to explore joint proposals in European programs such as Horizon Europe, Interreg or Digital Europe, while boosting public-private collaboration in the language technologies sector.
ALIA, context and driving force
The second edition of the meeting is framed within ALIA, a pioneering initiative of the Government of Spain in the European Union that seeks to provide the country with a public infrastructure of artificial intelligence resources, with special attention to the development of technological resources for the languages of the State, with a commitment to open, trustworthy AI oriented toward the common good.
The program included lectures, technical sessions and round tables on advances in language models adapted to Galician-Portuguese, transfer learning, speech technologies, applications in industry and public administration, and the impact of NLP on education, society and culture.
The opening lecture was given by Senén Barro (scientific director of CiTIUS) and Rui Sousa Silva (CLUP - NORTE IA+). This was followed by contributions from specialists from the Universities of Santiago de Compostela, Porto, Évora, Coimbra and Beira Interior, as well as leading companies and startups from both countries, such as Imaxin, Priberam, Balidea, Dimensiona, Serenia, DOKKEN and Innovationpoint. The directors of the two Atlantic supercomputers based in Santiago de Compostela (CESGA) and in Guimarães (Deucalion) were also present.
Proxecto Nós
The Proxecto Nós is an initiative to place Galician alongside the most developed languages in the field of language technology and artificial intelligence. Its main goal is to generate the resources needed to facilitate the development of services and products based on language technology, such as voice assistants, machine translators or conversational agents.
The meeting strengthens collaboration between Galicia and Portugal in order to establish the Atlantic axis as a European benchmark in the development of language technologies based on artificial intelligence
In parallel, the project also promotes the digital presence of Galician through high-quality, freely usable technological tools and resources. Some of them (a multilingual neural translator, a speech recognizer that converts speech into written text, a speech synthesis application that reads in Galician and a RAG) are freely accessible for institutions, companies and users who want to develop technological applications that incorporate the Galician language.
In this way, in addition to guaranteeing the language rights of the Galician-speaking community in the digital world, the project also contributes to the modernization of the Galician business ecosystem and to value creation through new language-based products.
Proxecto Nós is an initiative of the Xunta de Galicia, which entrusted its implementation to the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) through two leading research entities in language technologies and artificial intelligence: the Instituto da Lingua Galega (ILG) and the Centro Singular de Investigación en Tecnoloxías Intelixentes (CiTIUS), a research centre co-funded by the European Union through the Galicia ERDF Programme 2021–2027. It was previously funded by the Ministry for Digital Transformation and the Civil Service with European Union–NextGenerationEU funds, within the framework of the ILENIA project, and is now integrated into the ALIA project led by the State Secretariat for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence.
The University of Santiago de Compostela today hosted the 2nd Luso-Galician Meeting on Natural Language Processing (NLP). After the success of the first edition, held in Porto in June 2024, this second event has been consolidated as a key space to strengthen cooperation in language-oriented artificial intelligence between Galicia and Portugal.
A bond that Galicia reinforces in particular, as a natural meeting point between the Spanish-American and Lusophone worlds. As the scientific director of CiTIUS, Senén Barro, highlighted, “it is time to revitalize academic cooperation with Portugal in the field of artificial intelligence, transforming it into a strategic advantage that builds a true Galician-Portuguese area of research and innovation.”
“It is time to revitalize academic cooperation with Portugal in the field of artificial intelligence and turn it into a strategic advantage to create a true Galician-Portuguese space for research and innovation”
The meeting, led by the Proxecto Nós (a joint initiative of the Xunta de Galicia and the USC) and promoted within the framework of the ALIA project driven by the Government of Spain, brought together researchers, companies and other organizations involved in the development of language technologies for Galician-Portuguese, in an effort to position the Atlantic strip of the Iberian Peninsula as a pole of excellence in the application of artificial intelligence to languages, at a time when language technologies are becoming one of the main engines of AI and its social and economic applications. All this with the purpose of creating new commercial, business and research opportunities between Galicia and Portugal, not only for Portuguese and Galician, but also for all the languages of the territory: Spanish, Basque and Catalan.
The objectives of the meeting focused on creating a dynamic space to present research, projects and products developed in this field, as well as on promoting stable networks between research groups, technology centers and companies. The event also served to explore joint proposals in European programs such as Horizon Europe, Interreg or Digital Europe, while boosting public-private collaboration in the language technologies sector.
ALIA, context and driving force
The second edition of the meeting is framed within ALIA, a pioneering initiative of the Government of Spain in the European Union that seeks to provide the country with a public infrastructure of artificial intelligence resources, with special attention to the development of technological resources for the languages of the State, with a commitment to open, trustworthy AI oriented toward the common good.
The program included lectures, technical sessions and round tables on advances in language models adapted to Galician-Portuguese, transfer learning, speech technologies, applications in industry and public administration, and the impact of NLP on education, society and culture.
The opening lecture was given by Senén Barro (scientific director of CiTIUS) and Rui Sousa Silva (CLUP - NORTE IA+). This was followed by contributions from specialists from the Universities of Santiago de Compostela, Porto, Évora, Coimbra and Beira Interior, as well as leading companies and startups from both countries, such as Imaxin, Priberam, Balidea, Dimensiona, Serenia, DOKKEN and Innovationpoint. The directors of the two Atlantic supercomputers based in Santiago de Compostela (CESGA) and in Guimarães (Deucalion) were also present.
Proxecto Nós
The Proxecto Nós is an initiative to place Galician alongside the most developed languages in the field of language technology and artificial intelligence. Its main goal is to generate the resources needed to facilitate the development of services and products based on language technology, such as voice assistants, machine translators or conversational agents.
The meeting strengthens collaboration between Galicia and Portugal in order to establish the Atlantic axis as a European benchmark in the development of language technologies based on artificial intelligence
In parallel, the project also promotes the digital presence of Galician through high-quality, freely usable technological tools and resources. Some of them (a multilingual neural translator, a speech recognizer that converts speech into written text, a speech synthesis application that reads in Galician and a RAG) are freely accessible for institutions, companies and users who want to develop technological applications that incorporate the Galician language.
In this way, in addition to guaranteeing the language rights of the Galician-speaking community in the digital world, the project also contributes to the modernization of the Galician business ecosystem and to value creation through new language-based products.
Proxecto Nós is an initiative of the Xunta de Galicia, which entrusted its implementation to the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) through two leading research entities in language technologies and artificial intelligence: the Instituto da Lingua Galega (ILG) and the Centro Singular de Investigación en Tecnoloxías Intelixentes (CiTIUS), a research centre co-funded by the European Union through the Galicia ERDF Programme 2021–2027. It was previously funded by the Ministry for Digital Transformation and the Civil Service with European Union–NextGenerationEU funds, within the framework of the ILENIA project, and is now integrated into the ALIA project led by the State Secretariat for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence.