The Choctaw language is an Indigenous Muskogean language of North America, spoken in the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Due to the forced removal of Choctaw peoples from their homelands by the US government, as well as the forbidding of Choctaw language use in English-based boarding schools during the 20th century, the language is now under threat. Out of the 200,000+ people in the Choctaw Nation, it is estimated that there are 7,000 speakers of the language. There are projects to revitalize the Choctow language, including language classes and dictionaries, and there is ongoing momentum to create more technology in the language.
Jacqueline Brixey is contributing to this momentum: a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, she received her PhD in Computer Science, and she is using her expertise to develop technology for Choctaw language revitalization. She has created a dataset of over 300,000 Choctaw words, a chat bot, and a speech-to-text software. During this project, she will develop a Machine Translation program to translate English Wikipedia pages into Choctaw, with the goal of supporting learning speakers and promoting language accessibility.